John Bolton Claims Trump Did Little to Deter Putin: ‘Barely Knew Where Ukraine Was’

National Review

The Trump administration was tough on Russia in spite of the president, not because of him, as argued by former national-security adviser JohnBolton.

The Newsmax host pressed the national security adviser on whether Putin would have invaded under a second Trump administration. The Trump administration sold anti-tank weapons to Ukraine and expelled Russian officers, as well as holding NATO members financially accountable for collective security. The anchor cited a piece from the Brookings Institution, a left-of-center public-policy think tank, that said that Trump took 52 policy actions against Putin, challenging the argument that the former president was too sympathetic to the quasi-authoritarian.

He didn't sanctionNord Stream 2. We did not sanction Nord Stream 2. We should have brought the project to an end. The sanctions were imposed because of the sales of S-400 anti-aircraft systems to other countries.

The other penalties that the administration imposed on Russia were resisted by Trump and he showed a lack of knowledge of the region.

In almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it and saying we were being too hard. He didn't know where Ukraine was. John Kelly was his second chief of staff and he once asked if Finland were a part of Russia. It's not accurate to say that Trump's behavior deterred the Russians.

John Bolton pushes back on Newsmax host: "[Trump] barely knew where Ukraine was…It's just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians" pic.twitter.com/ICRmmeJ8C3
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 1, 2022

The majority of Americans think that Trump intimidated Putin into giving up his territorial ambitions.

A new survey shows that a majority of people think that Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president. According to 59 percent, they think Putin went with provocation because he saw weakness in Biden.

The former national-security adviser did not leave the Trump administration on good terms, even though he claimed to have offered to resign. The pair were at odds over the direction of U.S. foreign policy. A hawk and a believer in hard power,Bolton often differed from Trump's isolationist positions by which he wanted to prevent new international engagements and end some existing ones.

The White House tell-all book, The Room Where It Happened, was scheduled to launch before the 2020 election, but was delayed due to unfavorable details about Trump's foreign-policy conduct. In his memoir, JohnBolton claimed that Trump told him military aid to Ukraine would be contingent on its pledge to investigate alleged corruption by Joe and Hunter Biden.

The DOJ sued the author of the book because he didn't get written consent to publish the book. The lawsuit was dropped by the DOJ.

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