i'm not laughing at the germans because sometime down the place they're laughing with you but i don't think deep into the german culture yet you don't seem to take that as ground 0 you know it's all that there no time rachel join me i mean the japanese i think of course. but. i don't think he understood what he was doing he was talking to the big guys you know the big guys get together and they do big guy things but you did accept it for 17 months didn't you why some of the principal way you were removed from the presidency is probably i was actually smothered by impeachment this summer we're repeating some of our more memorable interviews like this one recorded in july with john bolton donald trump's former national security advisor the new book you maintains the president is unfair for office down here for actively destroying strums defense against the charge that he abused his office why didn't bolton tell

what he knew to the impeachment hearing earlier in the year and how far did charges corrupt government machine. john bolton welcome to conflict zone. i agree with you thank you for having me when you became donald trump's national security advisor you wrote that you thought you knew what you were getting yourself into it's not true why work for and give your loyalty to a man labeled as a serial liar. well i viewed the loyalty that i owed and i tried to live up to to the constitution and the country you know we're not a medieval society you don't have a legion lower than you personal loyalty to it's not the mafia or something like that and the fact was in my view the country faced some serious challenges

i think a number of. national security policies during the obama administration had been misguided there was a chance to make a contribution and. certainly went in with my eyes open but i believe it is least at that time that we could have a more regular process a more typical if you will republican administration and notwithstanding the risks i thought they were worth taking. and the risks they include the onus the and integrity of the president all the lack of it didn't matter to you. well it remains to be seen as far as i was concerned how much of this was campaign rhetoric by the opposition i had had as i recount in the book a number of conversations with donald trump before the election during the transition in his 1st year in office we talked about all of my views on the key

issues he had watch me on fox news for nearly 10 years i assume he was listening to what i was saying i certainly wasn't shy about sharing my views and therefore when we talked about working together and the. role of the national security adviser. it struck me it was entirely possible that we could work together and the issues of his character would not adversely affect the decision making on national security issues but there was a general i eat i don't i don't think i was naive. and i thought it could be as as many others did who came to work for the administration that it could be made successful now the book really is the story of whether that turned out to be true or not obstruction of justice is perhaps the most serious charge against trump you

talked about several episodes where he expressed a willingness to halt criminal investigations to in effect give personal favors to dictate as he liked to the turkish leader. even to xi jinping anyone else. well i think these these were the most obvious but. the whole concept of dealing for example with a lot of your putin is if the assertions of our intelligence services were the moral equivalent what putin said on behalf of russia. was another aspect of it and i felt that this was an extremely serious defect in trump's performance on the investigations of. bags c.t.e. rahway and others spoke with the counsel to the president spoke with the attorney

general really their domain to take a look at and i say in the book that they were troubled by this is the this is the ukraine case that everybody is familiar with that there was the kind of last issue that i dealt with before i resigned it's become the most famous but my point really was it was only one in a series terms pattern you said look like obstruction of justice as a way of life which you said we couldn't accept but you did accept it for 17 months the why so low well you know a pattern by definition is something that doesn't emerge all at once. and the personal dilemma anybody in a senior position faces is the knowledge that you're not going to prevail on every issue i like to say i was the national security advisor not the national security

decision maker in each of these cases as they came up i had conversations with others in the administration i certainly didn't feel that i was alone and my view. of the seriousness of these issues but i think it's a very personal decision. to try and decide when finally you have to resign versus whether you can she'd keep doing what you're trying to do because of the issues presented you say you shared your concerns about this pattern of obstruction with key members of the team the attorney general bill barr secretary of state my pompei oh you say barr told you he was very worried about the appearances trump was creating just the appearance is all that worried him. well look at the reason i informed him and the white house counsel cats lonnie and others was because they're

the ones responsible for enforcing the legal guidelines and boundaries. which they didn't do it was i so let me finish for a 2nd it's not my job to be the prosecutor it's my job to tell the people whose responsibility it is what i was saying and let them decide what to do the fact that i didn't know what they were doing it didn't surprise me and the fact is we don't know what may be going on you know it's very easy for somebody who's never been this kind of circumstance to just announce their moral purity and stand out and virtue signal my view is that that in in service to the country. that there are a lot of factors to be taken into account and the duty that one owes to the constitution faced with this kind of president isn't simply to make yourself feel

good bye bye by issuing. a virtuous pieties but really more by trying to get the right thing done so to take the example of ukraine my focus was on getting the security assistance. to ukraine the trunk was holding up to get that the liver and. that finally succeeded as it turned out the day after i resigned but that is the focus i think that. in my job it was my responsibility i told several members of the n.s.c. staff to speak to the lawyers to told them what we had seen and they did. that for fill their responsibilities. and and i thought that was the proper course of the officials you alerted to trump's obstruction of justice what conclusion did

you draw from their lack of any substance every action that trump successfully corrupted the government machine and made it life for him. well i think it's. it's pretty evident that. the number of people in inside the government. who are willing to. challenge trump on a number of these issues has diminished over time now let me be clear the president holds the constitutional responsibility and you can like that or not like that but the constitution is very clear that if you don't want to carry out an order the responsible thing to do is to resign and if others in the government are not carrying out their responsibilities that that's a matter for them and their conscience and how they see their job what is it about dictators and despots the tromso of the other tell you. know and i'm not a schrank i don't psychoanalyze people i think others others like to do that and

god bless them if that's what they want to do i think that trump in a sense in this region paintings and the and i'm glad i'm here putin's he liked talking to big guys you know the big guys get together and they do big guy things i think it was that simplistic i didn't see any evidence of. a relationship that would be improper or constitute undue influence i just think that was part of trump simple simplistic view of relations with foreign leaders especially authoritarian and foreign leaders let's take 3 north korean leader kim jong il and you were present at 2 out of 3 meetings between trump and kim you said there were times when we were very close to making concessions that i think even prior administrations. like the clinton and obama administrations wouldn't of made was trump willing to give away the shop what kinds of concessions do you mean. well i don't think he

understood what he was doing i think he. longed for a deal with north korea on the nuclear weapons program. i don't think he studied the issue closely enough to know what the ramifications and different terms that were offered were i think ultimately in the case of the noise some at the 2nd meeting where he did walk away from a proposal by north korea that i thought entirely inadequate he did so because he knew that if you were to accept that it would have produced a volcanic political reaction in america from the republican party and he fundamentally couldn't do that and that really was the sort of reaction the trouble made the most that he didn't approach north korea or much else on the basis of philosophy or grand strategy or policy imposed on the basis of what was

politically beneficial to him now look every democratic politician in whatever country takes politics into account in their decision making it goes with the territory it's not only not something to be surprised that it would be surprising if they didn't take into account the difference with tromp is qualitative it's the it's not just a factor in decision making on serious issues sometimes it seemed to me to be essentially the only factor he took into account a lot has been made of trump's supine attitude to vladimir putin his unwillingness to raise difficult issues like election interference is time scared of him. you know i don't think he's scared of him and and helsinki to. clear putin himself said at the lunch. after the one on one meeting the 2 of them had that it was

trump who had raised the election interference issue i think it's very important for people who observe. who have to make decisions on whether to vote for him or people who report on him to be accurate in their criticisms there's plenty to criticize. but when people stretch beyond what they need to do to make the criticism it doesn't strengthen the case against trump it weakens it in golden's many of his supporters they say were victims of a conspiracy by the press or whatever fake news hoaxes that sort of thing so when you have a lot of your putin saying that trump raised the election interference issue at the helsinki summit i think that's worth taking into account if you want to criticize trump if you're criticizing all you want i did but be accurate about. that

though detailed records going to watch all the buzz no do it's all records from 5 of trump's meetings with putin since taking office and the least one occasion in the 2017 he asked for the interpreter's notes and ordered him to say nothing about the discussion which does indicate doesn't it had something to hide from these discussions i don't know what it indicates i wasn't in the government in 2017 i can tell you in the case of the helsinki meeting and se stand did speak with their interpreter and got a pretty complete readout of what the 2 leaders discussed which turned out to be mostly on syria mostly putin talk and. you know i think that trump is very mistrustful. not only the bureaucracy as a whole but but even his own staff. i think it reflects the way he did business in the trump organization and i think one of his problems as president is that he

still hasn't fully appreciated what it means to be president of united states as opposed to the head of the trump organization credible is trying to claim not to have been briefed about reports that the russians paid the taliban to kill american soldiers you were national security advisor in march last year when this information apparently surfaced. well there have been press reports not a fact then you know press reports are sometimes wrong and in any event i have said repeatedly i'm not going to comment on that because it doesn't. intelligence i can say with respect to the information reported about this issue and 2020 that it's surprising to me that it wasn't briefed to the president the administration itself has apparently said it was in the presidential daily brief during my 17 months at the white house i never saw any evidence that the president read the p.t.b.

and in terms of whether or not it was briefed said and i think it's important for people understand that i agreed with susan rice who has written out there where she said if she were a national security adviser and that information had come to her attention she'd have gone and to the oval office and told. him and i like to think i would have done the same do you buy the story which is being put out by your successor as national security advisor robert o'brien as the president's career cia briefer decided not to brief him about this because it was under verified intelligence she made that call and i think she made the right call does the system work like that. well it didn't work like that when i was there nor did it work like that my predecessor a charming master at least as i understand it. the issue when you only an oral briefing to the president twice a week is how much are you going to try and squeeze in

a limited amount of time and that's usually the sky. preliminary meeting right before going in to see the president with the director of national intelligence director and cia briefer of the time and myself you know it would be better if the president read the materials and studied them more carefully i think that written materials tend to be a more efficient way to convey information certainly the presidents always free to ask questions and that is to be encouraged but it's despite what some advisers to the president has said he does not consume as much intelligence as you should let's talk if we may about the 2800 murder of the saudi journalist jamal khashoggi by saudi operatives in istanbul october the 15th decided to stand by the saudi leadership and even wrote their excuse for them suggesting it was

a rogue operation but it wasn't a rogue operation was a. well you know i'm not going to get into. the intelligence that the united states had on that i can say the president decided that he was going to stand by the saudis and. because of the importance of the relationship. that position i think was. it was in a way verified by vladimir putin in a conversation i had with him in moscow he said brooke you don't want to sell weapons to the saudis you don't have to i'd be happy to sell it is that what it really comes down to who is going to be able to sell weapons to whom you gave a free pass to a government that brazenly chops up its political opponents and other people's countries not just to the saudis but to every other state the u.s. does big business with but does its own people doesn't that worry you. well you know as when it in churchill said if. if the devil were opposed

to learn he would have found it in his heart for a kind word to say on the floor of the house of commons you don't you don't always get to pick who your allies are and difficult unstable part of the world nobody in the administration condoned what happened you can show there's no question about it but we live in a harsh world. you live in a world where i wonder how many of the untold masses jailed for having opinions in saudi arabia and other despotic states that the us but friends would go along with your statement that the greatest hope for freedom of mankind is the us if a country that can finesse missed the question is the best hope for mankind's freedom then god help me nervous. well look you're entitled to your opinion i'm glad and proud to be an american citizen there isn't any country in the world that

has done more to protect human freedom in the united states period close quote. let's talk about iran if we may so many bad deals to kill you once wrote so little time the one that you really had in your sights over many years was the iran nuclear deal wasn't it on the forcible that you were betting. on enforceable you quoted on verifiable and adequate ration in scope but you wanted to kill that deal with nothing to put in its place over the objections of key members of israel's military and intelligence stuff who regard iran as their number one many of them didn't see it your way that. well i think you have it wrong about israel i think support for the u.s. getting out of the iran nuclear deal in israel is overwhelming you may have noticed some things are happening in iran their. centrifuges simply planet natanz apparently had a severe accident that they had not revealed fully there are other explosions going

on around the country i don't know who's doing it but i'm glad somebody is doing it i don't know whether it's a precursor to taking down the entire nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program in iran but. it certainly is a step in that direction the fact is i don't trust the ayatollah has and the regime i think they consistently withheld information from international inspectors they wide about the nature of the program for 20 plus years until they were caught time and time again in those lies i don't think they ever made a strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons and i think the u.s. decision to pull out of the deal. caught them by surprise and left them in a very difficult position it's a hugely unpopular regime in iran and hopefully the day will come. when the ayatollah as you swept into the dustbin of history. if we could just go back to

ukraine you decided not to give testimony the house impeachment hearing you didn't like the way the democrats handled the process you called it impeachment malpractise if you thought the president was abusing his power wasn't it more important to get that out of the moring about procedural issues isn't it more important to get a result again you're back in the virtue signaling posturing mode of politics and that's just not the way i do things the democratic malpractise which is what it was left the situation worse than it was before the impeachment because the way they conducted the impeachment in a very partisan fashion essentially guaranteed a partisan outcome and the outcome was that the senate acquitted trouble so the impeachment advocates said that the house action of impeaching the president he would be deterred from engaging in the kind of conduct we saw in ukraine but they

had no way of getting 2 thirds of the senate to vote to convict so have an acquitted trial and they did not the church him they empowered him they were removed the impeachment guardrail is a huge mistake by publishing this book what i've done is to try and lay the facts out before the real judges not congress but the american people we have an election in 4 months the american people will speak i trust their judgment more than congress but the election isn't a substitute for the constitutional provisions for removing a president from office. so you think. what do you think the lections are if they're not the principal constitutional path to doing just that and page that has occurred 4 times in american history and no president has. never been convicted only nixon resigned and what distinguishes the watergate impeachment

proceeding from the 3 that failed andrew johnson bill clinton and donald trump the democrats worked in watergate with republican sam ervin of north korea and north carolina worked with howard baker of tennessee and they produced a growing feeling. on a bipartisan basis that nixon had to go by ignoring that relatively recent precedent the democrats guaranteed the outcome we got that the and this this is a i think a very fundamental point about democratic theory the principle way you remove presidents is by election is not by. we're 4 months away from the next of those elections what is true in blues is by a small margin do you expect him to go quietly or organize some go of bizarre national emergency to try and stay away. well maybe you would tell me what evidence you have that he's planning to to create

a bizarre national emergency you know for those in arizona didn't see the vote it will be the most corrupt election in the history of our country and we cannot let this happen so you're making the same mistake as many trump critics you're exaggerating without adequate evidence and i. mean i know from your questions you obviously despise truck that's fine and i understand that but but the way you're approaching it makes it difficult for those of us who are opposed to him getting another term to make the case to americans who want to know what the facts are that that's something that you know the people will decide here in 4 months and we'll see what the outcome is before you get hyperthyroid that it let's see what happens jumbo then thanks very much for being on conflicts i enjoyed.

what's going on here well no house of your family only from a printer. computer games that are killing. my dog needs electricity. delivers facts and what the future holds for. living in the digital world. shift. in 15 minutes on d w. it's

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and this is it to give you news live from berlin chaos in the city center of berlin police stop a demonstration against germany's coronavirus traditions thousands of protesters remain in the streets to voice their anger against the government's handling of the pandemic. black panther start chadwick boseman has died at the age of 43 after a long battle with chants we'll hear about the actor's life and legacy. role playing holocaust victims on tick tock the auschwitz birkenau museum so.