John Bolton in 2010 Interview: Why Yes, I'd Gladly Lie If I Believed It Would Further My Ideas About National Security

This isn't really such a huge thing -- most people working in this area would probably say the same thing, if they weren't, you know, lying -- but it is interesting, given the claims of the NeverTrump Rump that while it's now open season on calling Rudy Giuliani -- a Mafia-busting former prosecutor and "America's Mayor" -- basically a mafia capo, it is just despicable to impugn John Bolton as anything other than a Straight-Arrow Straight Shooter On the Level of James Comey or Robert Mueller.

You know, the last guy these sissies all vouched for.

By the way, this is a sort of humblebragging. When they swear up and down that Famous Person X is honest and beyond mortal corruption, they are very obviously suggesting/bragging, "I'm virtually on a first-name basis with my very good friend John/James/Robert."

Crossing paths with someone at a National Review Institute Symposium doesn't make you best friends or an expert on their deep personality traits.

Anyway, here's that interview with Andrew Napolitano. (Another winner.)

[Bolton] approvingly quoted Winston Churchill’s assertion that "truth is so important it should be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies."

"Do you really believe that?" Napolitano responded. "You would lie in order to preserve the truth?"

"Absolutely," Bolton said. "If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it."

And, in August 2019, Bolton called relations between the US and Ukraine "warm and cordial."

This is at the same time that, if reports are to be believed, he was very concerned that Trump was pressusing Zeleskey to investigate Ukranian interference in the US election.

But, even while he was saying that publicly, he was also contacting Democrats behind the scenes to suggest that there was something wrong with firing Masha Yovanovich, who was reportedly telling her opposite numbers in Ukraine to just ignore the president, because he would soon be impeached.

Rep. Eliot Engel in a statement on Wednesday said John Bolton in September expressed concerns to him about the recall of Marie Yovanovitch.

Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, was abruptly pulled from her diplomatic post after the president's personal lawyer led what she and other officials have described as a smear campaign against her.

In a September phone call, shortly after Bolton was dismissed from the Trump administration, Engel said the former national security adviser "strongly implied that something improper had occurred around her removal."

Democrats are currently working to see that Bolton testifies in President Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial.

So is Bolton's integrity beyond all question? He's saying things in public, and then secretly telling the Democrats "investigate Yovanovitch's firing" secretly.

Some will say "That's how the game is played."

Okay, so that's the way it's played -- it's played dirty and dishonestly, so stop telling me "John Bolton's reputation for honesty and square-dealing is beyond any disputation." That itself is a lie. You can't say "Everyone knows that this is how the Insiders play the game in Washington" in one breath and then claim "This Washington Insider has the sort of unimpeachable integrity that puts him beyond dishonest games-playing."

And meanwhile, many of us are sitting here seeing how dirty the game is played, and wondering: Why isn't Trump allowed to play just as dirty as your scumbags?

So, could Bolton be lying? Or... telling the carefully-selected details that uphold a narrative he wants to push, while withholding others?

Well, John Bolton does take it as an article of religious faith that if there's war anywhere in the world, the US must intervene, preferably with boots-on-the-ground troops, on one side or another. It seems sometimes that side is chosen nearly at random, but we must get involved. For reasons.

It is hard not to notice that the discredited, rebuked War Caucus is very, very angry that they have had their status and influence reduced by this vulgar nouveau-riche commoner Trump.

It's hard not to look back at the last four years and not recognize that this group will do practically anything -- including defecting to the Democrat Party while pretending to be "Republicans" to inflict maximum damage (and get maximum donations from Soros & Co.) -- to reassert their Right to Rule the Republican Party.

It should also be noted that most of the people vouching for John Bolton are simultaneously vouching for the absolute integrity of... Joe Biden, the Democrat they are pretending is "conservative" and backing in the 2020 race.

So they're not disinterested parties with no dog in this fight as they usually imply, when they're playing their "Both sides!" games.

They have a rooting interest -- they are behind Joe Biden, and they are against Joe Biden's opponent Donald Trump.

And it's another lie for them to pretend otherwise.

posted by Ace at 06:25 PM

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