John Bolton comes out swinging at Donald Trump

You knew it was coming, just because John Bolton is a bloodthirsty egomaniac who was ousted by Donald Trump in humiliating fashion. You really knew it was coming when it turned out that Bolton’s ouster lined up closely with the timing of Trump’s whistleblower scandal, and Bolton was going to get out in front of it. Sure enough, here we go.

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 notable because Bolton’s speech comes even as NBC News is reporting 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, based on this same NBC reporting, 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.