John Bolton, who served as the national security adviser under the Trump administration confessed to helping plan coups in foreign countries.
During an appearance on CNN, John Bolton said that he has helped plan coups in other countries while contending that former President Trump’s actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the Capitol attack did not amount to a coup attempt.
“As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but you know, other places, it takes a lot of work,” Bolton said.
Neocon John Bolton just publicly admitted he has helped plan foreign coups pic.twitter.com/dbfrPh165J
— Jack Posobic 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 12, 2022
However, Bolton, who served as the national security adviser to Trump from 2018 to 2019, did not elaborate on the countries he helped to plan coups while in office. When Tapper pressed him for clarification over comments about having a planned coup, Bolton referred to the failed 2019 Venezuelan coup attempt against President Nicolás Maduro, though he added that the U.S. government did not have “much to do with” it.
Bolton said he disagreed with the notion that Donald Trump attempted a coup, which, he said, required cunning and elaborate planning.
“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 added.
Speaking to CNN’s Jack Tappers, Bolton described Trump’s actions to overturn the election results as indefensible but added that the former president was a “disturbance in the force” rather than a leader of an “attack on our democracy.”
He asserted that Trump did “unleash” the rioters on the Capitol, but it was not to subvert the Constitution and instead was to give himself more time to challenge the results in state legislatures.
Bolton, an unrepentant hawk, had served in various capacities in many Republican administrations, starting with Ronald Reagan’s in the 1980s. He was appointed as the US ambassador to the United Nations under former President George W. Bush and was among the most passionate proponents of the US invasion of Iraq. Bolton had also extended his support for bombing Iran and North Korea, an approach that put him at odds with Trump, who sacked him in 2019.
