The perfect storm unleashed by John Bolton

Political week in Washington has a protagonist with a first and a last name: John Bolton, former National Security Advisor. The publishing house Simon & Scuster has published a critical book about the presidency of the current tenant of the White House, and the first chapters have already been filtered and scrutinized by the cenacles of power in Mexico City. The soap opera has begun, and it is going to reach the courts, and like everything that surrounds the two central characters, the president and his ex-counselor, it is surrounded by exaggerations and thick brushstrokes. 

Between April 2018 and September 2019, he held the position of National Security Advisor, which he had accepted by avoiding the Senate examination, which is not necessary for this position, and to be close to President Donald Trump. The marriage between the two was cut with the pattern of a radicalism that seemed to fit the public trajectory of both characters.

Bolton has always been a highly placed official in Republican administrations: with Reagan he became Assistant U.S. Attorney General, with George Bush Sr. he was Assistant Secretary of State for International Affairs, and with Bush Jr. he became Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control during the 2003 Iraq war, and Ambassador to the United Nations. He has been a regular commentator on Fox News programs, the scourge of American progressivism, and has always been skeptical of multilateral treaties and globalization (for example, he deplores the work of the International Criminal Court). 

The Baltimore politician has always held a controversial but defining idea of his ultraliberalism: he prefers freedom to democracy. Bigger words that border on things that the West always tries to avoid. He left his last public post because Trump was not very forceful on issues such as dialogue with North Korea or talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And it is only now, as he lifts the carpets of his political relationship with the boss, that the passion for his figure has been unleashed. When Bolton was a Republican hawk defending sending the Marines to Venezuela or using force against Iran to stop its nuclear escalation, he was the subject of constant criticism and attacks from the left-wing media. Today, John Bolton has become a character admired by all those who rejected him for years, and the reason is none other than the opening of the jar of his anti-Trump essences, an argument that in half of American society is received as manna fallen from heaven. 

The chaos he paints in the Oval Office and its adjoining rooms is a delight for morning and prime time. The networks launch into graphics, interviews and debates about what Bolton is revealing, in what we could call the perfect storm of the political summer in the United States. The president's shortcomings in geography and his lack of knowledge of geostrategy are for now being the preferred, though not new, dish. His lack of knowledge that the United Kingdom is a nuclear power is even more dangerous.

Asking his trade enemy to help him win the 2020 elections by buying American agricultural products fits directly into the picture: the one who has been your greatest external enemy would become your ally for re-election. No one believes that. Venezuela is a key chapter. As far as it goes, Trump has really had on the table the military intervention in 2019, after the unfortunate month of January when Maduro decided to screw himself into power by violating the constitution of his own country.

It even came to the point of a pronouncement involving Venezuelan military, but a conversation between the president and Vladimir Putin put a stop to it. Bolton's revelations may be a crime if he has betrayed the content of secretive conversations, but there is no doubt that they are bait for the press and for all those who are sighing over the fall of Trump on November 3. The entertainment that entertains the Capitol's surroundings and the pro- and anti-Trump televisions at all times these days will end up in court, with the complaint filed by the Justice Department. Has Bolton revealed official secrets in his book? If he has, there is a judicial ordeal waiting for him, but also a media pulpit.