On Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said he was “skeptical” about reports of acrimonious conversations between President Donald Trump and certain world leaders, notably the president of Mexico and prime minister of Australia.
“People are leaking to make a point from their own political perspective,” he said. “I’d rather see more evidence of what comes out of the calls.”
“I don’t think anybody should doubt the president’s going to be very heavily involved in setting foreign policy,” he added. “I think most people who look at elections in this country think that ninety percent of his job is about domestic policy. That’s the main topic of debate during campaigns. But in fact, on critical national security decisions, it’s not the secretary of state or the secretary of defense or the national security adviser who make the final call; it’s always the president.”
“There have been a lot of phone calls that nothing was leaked from them, maybe because they were very bland and pro forma,” he speculated. “Let’s see what happens. I do think that there’s a tendency here now that the media is on anything they can find to go after Trump. Maybe some of it’s accurate. Maybe some of it’s not. This is part of the media fury that’s still being played out that Hillary Clinton didn’t win.”
Based on his experience with transcripts of calls between foreign leaders, Bolton said that “they’re distributed to a very small circle of people.”
“That would normally include, obviously, the secretary of state and a few other people at the State Department. These calls were before Tillerson was confirmed yesterday or sworn in, so if you want to know who’s leaking, I’ve got my own suspicions where it came from.”
“I think there’s so much of a tendency of the press in the early days – we’re now still in the first two weeks of the administration – to make mountains out of molehills. Has everything gone exactly, perfectly according to Emily Post in all these calls?” he asked, referring to the legendary expert on etiquette. “Well, maybe not, but that’s not surprising nor trouble over the longterm.”
John Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and head of his own political action committee, BoltonPAC.
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