John Bolton’s memoir is set to be released next week, although once again, Donald Trump’s administration is trying to delay or even kill the book entirely. And while I definitely don’t want Trump to be able to stop its release on censorship grounds, I have no personal stake in seeing it because this is a book I will never, ever read–especially since Trump inexplicably waited until after the press had received their copies.
“Mr. President, the White House had John Bolton’s book for six months – why didn’t you try to block it sooner?” He did not answer why they waited until last night to request a restraining order, when book (and allegedly classified info) was already in the hands of many reporters. pic.twitter.com/9ALiUh0xhO
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) June 18, 2020
That means we can all choose not to support Trump’s former national security advisor if we wish, but we still get to hear the important bits secondhand while also reveling in the terrible feedback and reviews. And they are terrible.
Back in January, the New York Times ran an excerpt from an unpublished draft of Bolton’s book, which is titled The Room Where It Happened, because Hamilton has become the Harry Potter of politics in that a whole lot of people seem to have an arsenal of exactly one pop culture reference.
In that excerpt, Bolton basically confirmed that Trump was lying in his denials about the Ukrainian scandal that led to his impeachment.
In the full memoir, Bolton goes even further and says there were other potentially impeachable offenses Congress didn’t even get into. Trump was impeached for abuses of power in soliciting the Ukrainian government for assistance in the 2020 election. Bolton said he also did the same thing with the Chinese government. Trump was also impeached for obstruction of justice in the investigation into that abuse of power. Bolton says Trump tried to curry favor with so many dictators, he held “obstruction of justice as a way of life.”
You know where all of this information would have been really useful? At the impeachment hearings. Not in a goddamn book.
But Bolton refused to testify in the House inquiry. He said he would testify if the Republican-majority Senate subpoenaed him, which, predictably, they did not.
Yet in his book, according to the New York Times, Bolton has the nerve to criticize the House for moving too quickly to settle on articles of impeachment, thereby missing what he saw as other impeachable offenses. Which sounds like something he could have told House Democrats if he’d agreed to testify when they asked. Instead, he justifies his inaction by saying it wouldn’t have had any impact on the Senate trial which is obviously true, that was always going to be rigged. That excuse is still just, as the Times‘ Jennifer Szalai puts it, “self-righteous and self-serving sort of fatalism.”
No one seems to have any patience for Bolton’s choice to put all his information and opinions in a book instead of an impeachment hearing.
Is there a word for “Powerful, well-placed person who sees firsthand that the President routinely commits impeachable offenses, yet refuses to testify, but then does a book when it’s too late”? https://t.co/ZWVU8hRP2B
— Elie Honig (@eliehonig) June 17, 2020
John Bolton could have come forward with another Impeachable offense about Trump’s solicitation of campaign help from China. He cowardly remained silent but it doesn’t change the culpability of Senate Republicans who knew. https://t.co/gE8l2RxyBe
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) June 19, 2020
The headline says it all. https://t.co/ZMTOLda8Nm
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) June 18, 2020
Lin clearly isn’t too happy about that title, either.
Let me tell you what I wish I’d known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control
Who lives, who dies, who
[borrows your song title to write a cash-in book when they could have testified before Congress]
tells your story…https://t.co/mJlJaxGDnf— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 18, 2020
Even the ACLU, after tweeting condemnation of Trump’s desire to silence Bolton, made it clear they’re not on Team Bolton here.
Bolton retweeted the ACLU’s reaction to the Trump administration’s attempts at censorship:
Please see the @ACLU statement on my upcoming book release. https://t.co/QNiG40vmQ6
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) June 16, 2020
But I don’t think this ended up going how he’d planned.
Now that we have your attention @AmbJohnBolton, please also see the ACLU statement on your atrocious human rights record. https://t.co/GWZNZCj9Lz
— ACLU (@ACLU) June 16, 2020
As National Security Advisor, @AmbJohnBolton threatened the ICC over its investigations into the United States’ war crimes in Afghanistan, and celebrated when survivors were denied the opportunity to hold their torturers accountable.
We didn’t forget.https://t.co/w4i0SJnjNz
— ACLU (@ACLU) June 16, 2020
On top of all of this, Bolton’s book is reportedly terribly written. Just an absolute mess.
“Bolton, who refused to testify at the House impeachment hearings, may be the last person many Americans wish to hear from right now — not that he would ever deign to make any concessions to what a reader might want,” writes Szalai. “‘The Room Where It Happened,’ an account of his 17 months as Trump’s national security adviser, has been written with so little discernible attention to style and narrative form that he apparently presumes an audience that is hanging on his every word.”
From a literary perspective, “so little discernible attention to style and narrative form that he apparently presumes an audience that is hanging on his every word.”https://t.co/KhSY1KSVmW
— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) June 17, 2020
The Times also writes, “The book is bloated with self-importance, even though what it mostly recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much. It toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged.”
NPR says that Bolton’s “ego is intellectual, even academic. He clearly does not expect to attract the casual reader, or anyone else unable to digest sentences such as this one on the third page: ‘Constant personnel turnover obviously didn’t help, nor did the White House’s Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (“war of all against all”).'”
From Washington Post, which says Bolton’s “self-satisfaction becomes annoying”:
Bolton is the hero of nearly every anecdote in the book. Indeed, for a memoir that is startlingly candid about many things, Bolton’s utter lack of self-criticism is one of the book’s significant shortcomings. Nearly every policy discussion is an opportunity for Bolton to say that he was right, people should have listened to him, he knew it would never work, he was vindicated. His only problem is that, having burned so many bridges with this book, Fox News may not give him a future platform to explain how right he is.
I very much look forward to never reading this book.
(image: Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)
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