John Bolton, National Security Adviser under Trump administration publically admitted that he has helped plan foreign coups

John Bolton, the national security adviser for the Trump administration, admitted to assisting in the plotting of coups abroad. John Bolton claimed that he had assisted in the planning of coups in other nations while arguing that the acts taken by former President Trump before to the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021 did not constitute a coup attempt. Bolton said “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but you know, other places, it takes a lot of work. That’s not the way Donald Trump does things. It’s rambling from one … idea to another, one plan that falls through, and another comes up,” Bolton, who advised Trump on national security matters from 2018 to 2019, didn’t go into detail about the nations where he assisted in coup preparations while in government.

Bolton pointed to the unsuccessful 2019 Venezuelan coup attempt against President Nicolás Maduro when Tapper pressed him for clarity regarding remarks about having a planned coup, though he added that the U.S. government did not have “much to do with” it. Bolton stated that he disagreed with the idea that Donald Trump tried to stage a coup, which, in his opinion, called for cunning and extensive planning. Bolton said in an interview with CNN’s Jack Tappers that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results were unacceptable, but he added that the previous president was merely a “disturbance in the force” rather than the mastermind of a “assault on our democracy.” He claimed that while Trump did “unleash” the rioters on the Capitol, he did so to allow himself more time to fight the outcomes in state legislatures rather than to violate the Constitution. Unrepentant hawk Bolton had held a number of positions in several Republican administrations, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s in the 1980s. He was among the most ardent supporters of the US invasion of Iraq when he was selected as the US ambassador to the UN by former President George W. Bush. Bolton had also backed striking Iran and North Korea, which put him at conflict with Trump, who fired him in 2019.

 

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