John Bolton comes out swinging --- at Donald Trump!

John Bolton gave a speech today in which he ripped Donald Trump’s approach with North Korea to shreds, arguing that Trump ended up giving Kim Jong Un leverage in the process. That’s not surprising, of course. What’s more interesting is that Bolton used his speech today to assert that he opposed Trump’s Ukraine scheme altogether.

This is interesting because Bolton’s speech comes that John Bolton tried to convince Trump not to make the fateful phone call to the president of Ukraine that’s since set Trump’s presidency on fire. In other words, Bolton and his allies are trying to paint Trump as having been singularly out of control when he was carrying out this plot, as opposed to having merely been doing what his advisers and experts told him to do.

Interestingly, John Bolton and his allies are trying to protect Mike Pence from the fallout, as they’re insisting that Pence did not listen in on Donald Trump’s Ukraine phone call. This isn’t surprising, as Bolton and Pence appear to be personally allied with each other. This comes after Trump held a press conference last week and repeatedly urged the media to investigate Pence’s own phone calls to the president of Ukraine.

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