Donald Trump just announced on Twitter that he’s forcibly parting ways with John Bolton, his third National Security Adviser in less than three years. There will be a lot of speculation about why this has happened, but Trump more or less gave it away it in his tweet. For that matter, we’ve seen this coming for a few days – and this is really about Trump’s escalating feud with Mike Pence.
For reference, here’s what Trump tweeted just now: “I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.”
Yesterday, CNN reported that Mike Pence and John Bolton had both tried to talk Donald Trump out of hosting the Taliban at Camp David. At the time, Palmer Report pointed out that this leak could only have come from Pence and Bolton, because they didn’t want to take the blame for Trump’s asinine idea. This came even as Trump was insisting on Twitter that he had nothing to do with Pence’s decision to stay at a Trump resort on the taxpayer dime.
Donald Trump was so bothered by yesterday’s leak, he immediately insisted on Twitter that the whole story was false. But he obviously knew it was true. Trump presumably wanted to fire Mike Pence over it, but after his handlers explained to him that he can’t fire Pence in the middle of a presidential term, he decided to fire John Bolton instead. At this rate you really have to wonder if Pence will be on the Trump 2020 ticket – if the increasingly self destructing Trump even makes it that far.