President Donald Trump and his third national security adviser, John Bolton, seemed to be in lockstep. Sort of.
Trump didn't really want a traditional national security adviser. And Bolton didn't really want to perform the role of a traditional national security adviser. A perfect match � no chance!
Here's what Trump mainly didn't want: He didn't want the bother of a national security adviser briefing him on the boring pluses and minuses of his Cabinet team's often conflicting views. Also, Trump wasn't about to spend his time reading all those must-read memos before making his national security decisions. Trump's second NSC adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, persisted in doing that � Trump considered it an eye-glazing time-waster that just cramped his midday TV watching. Trump hired Bolton mainly because he liked the way Bolton kept bashing Democrats on Fox News. He knew Bolton was a hardline militarist, unlike Trump, who was unencumbered by ideology.
Here's what Bolton didn't want: He didn't want to be Trump's funneler and explainer of Cabinet secretaries' views. Bolton just wanted to do what he'd always done, ever since his first government gig under President Ronald Reagan � aggressively push his own hawkish views and make them America's policies.
And if that sometimes didn't work out, Bolton knew how to play at the intersection of policy, politics and the news media. For the past 17 months, the easiest story for a Washington journalist to get was the non-scoop that Bolton strongly disagreed with whatever Trump just decided. As in, Bolton strongly disagreed with: Trump's weird love-letter exchanges and DMZ stroll with North Korea's Kim Jong Un (who is still expanding his arsenal); and Trump's bro-fest with Russia's Vladimir Putin (who ordered Russia's 2016 cyberattacks and is still attempting to sabotage America's democracy!).
And Bolton really detested Trump's new softer line on Iran � canceling a retaliatory military strike, welcoming a no-conditions meeting with Iran's president and being willing to ease Iranian sanctions to make it happen.
Bolton's last straw reportedly was when Trump, working only with Pompeo, naively invited the Afghanistan's Talban to secretly talk peace at Camp David the Sunday before 9/11. But that was scrapped when a Kabul suicide bomber killed Afghan troops and a U.S. soldier � and Trump's would-be summit guests proudly claimed credit!
What pushed Trump to fire Bolton now? While Trump aides cite Bolton's hawkish objections on Iran, others say Trump's real last straw was when he became a late-night laughing stock. After word leaked that Trump urged nuking hurricanes to divert them from America, TV comedians ridiculed Trump bigtime. Someone (Pompeo?) reportedly told Trump that Bolton leaked it. CBS News reported that was Trump's real last straw moment.
If publicly blasting your president seems like a good way to get fired, making a president look like a buffoon or a puppet should guarantee it. But not always.
Back in October 1981, Bolton's first year in government, a long Washington Post piece detailed how President Ronald Reagan rehearsed for a press conference, with top advisers impersonating reporters and suggesting improved answers. But what got most attention was its revelation that press secretary Larry Speakes told Reagan if he got in a jam, just turn to his right, because that's where aides would seat the media's "known friendlies." It recounted three times during Reagan's press conference when he did just that.
Reagan was reportedly furious, Speakes wrote in his autobiography, "Speaking Out." Contrite and shaken, Speakes went to the Oval Office, took full blame for the leak and promised never to do it again. "He was obviously humiliated and hurt by what I had told the Post," Speakes wrote. Yet Reagan simply said: "That's all right, but you made me look like Charlie McCarthy" � a reference, Speakes explained, to "the puppet that belonged to the late ventriloquist Edgar Bergen."
While I normally refuse to delve into a reporter's sources, today I'm making an exception. Because they were my sources; I reported and wrote that Post story. Poor Speakes assumed he was my main source, but actually I had many sources for that story. Larry only provided a small part of what I reported. And he definitely wasn't the source of the "known friendlies" part that generated the most controversy.
Larry Speakes and Ronald Reagan both died after years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Their Oval Office confrontation ended not with name-calling and a firing, but with the civility that befitted those two fine and decent men. That was back in an era that is probably beyond the comprehension of the new generation of advisers who now work in a White House where a president name-calls and fires via tweets � and a new generation of journalists who must use those juvenile tweets as their go-to source for breaking news.
