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President Donald Trump is not "fit for office" and doesn't have "the competence to carry out the job," his former national security adviser John Bolton told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

In an explosive new book about his 17 months at the White House, Bolton characterizes Trump as "stunningly uninformed," ignorant of basic facts and easily manipulated by foreign adversaries.

But his assessment that Trump is not "fit" to be president is among the most stunning indictments of a sitting president by one of their own top advisers in American history.

Bolton argues that Trump was more focused on those photo ops than advancing America's national security or foreign policy goals, writing in his book, "The Room Where It Happened," that he's "hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn't driven by re-election calculations."

Trump pushed back on Bolton's criticism and defended his foreign policy decisions late Wednesday, telling the Wall Street Journal, "He is a liar," and, "Everyone in the White House hated John."

A hard-liner on North Korea who has advocated for a preemptive strike on the country's nuclear facilities, Bolton was particularly aghast at Trump's diplomatic outreach to Kim, writing, "I was sick at heart over Trump's zeal to meet with Kim Jong Un."

Asked about Trump's three meetings with Kim in particular, Bolton told ABC News, "There was considerable emphasis on the photo opportunity and the press reaction to it and little or no focus on what such meetings did for the bargaining position of the United States."