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Salon
Salon
Politics
Kelly McClure

Bolton: Trump “doesn’t have the brains”

Having worked as Donald Trump's National Security Adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, John Bolton has seen enough to form a concrete opinion on the man. And his opinion is that the former president isn't that sharp. Or at least not as sharp as he'd have us believe.

In a recent interview with Conservative French outlet Le Figaro, Bolton fielded questions on whether or not he viewed Trump as having dictatorial tendencies, sprung from recent comments made on the campaign trail where the GOP frontrunner has said as much himself.

“He hasn’t got the brains! He’s a property developer for God’s sake!” Bolton said in response.

Trump has made a habit out of serving up praise for foreign leaders of nations the U.S. is at odds with, boasting about receiving "beautiful letters” from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and calling Chinese President Xi Jinping a “very good person.” But Bolton doesn't place him in the same category, for the reasons mentioned above.

“Trump, when he has an idea, comes back to it again and again, then gets distracted, forgets, but eventually comes back to it and acts on it. That’s why leaving NATO is a real possibility. A lot of people think it’s just a negotiating tool, but I don’t think so,” Bolton said. 

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