John Bolton: Yes. I don’t think there’s any other explanation. The Secret Service protection was re-extended to me. I’d had it when I was at the White House as national security adviser, but re-extended because of the Iranian threat. And there were a group of us, former, some current, government officials who were being targeted by the Iranians. It was not anything I had, anything to formulate. It was done by the intelligence community. And that threat remains as of this past weekend. I was told exactly the same as when I received protection.
The same is true for everybody else. This is not just me. And that’s proven by the fact that a day or two later he removed former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s security detail and one other. Look, just purely as a matter of politics, from Trump’s point of view, if I or Mike Pompeo or one of the others who are threatened by the Iranians are killed, the blood will be on Trump’s hands. What’s he going to do to the Iranians then, and what’s the political consequence for him in America going to be? You’ve got to think about these things.
Matt Frei: So do you feel personally in danger now?
John Bolton: I think the risk is obviously there. If the risk weren’t real, the Justice Department in my case wouldn’t have filed criminal charges against a Revolutionary Guard official who was trying to hire a hitman for the embarrassingly low sum of $300,000 to assassinate me a while back. This is the kind of thing the Iranian government does all over the world. They go after people in Europe. They go after people here in the United States. And it’s a measure of just how thoroughly terrorist the state Iran is today. So when they see the US government, in effect, disarming, in response to this kind of threat, I think it follows fairly easily that the Iranians are emboldened to do even more.
Matt Frei: Do you think the first week of Trump’s presidency has sort of set a tone of revenge and retribution, not just against people like you, but his opponents and critics in general?
John Bolton: I think he’s well on the way. I think his pardoning of the January 6th demonstrators, including some who committed really atrocious acts of violence, was intended as a signal. It’s intended to have an intimidation effect on others. And I think there are other steps that he’s been taking. I think this will continue to unfold. I think that’s who the man is. I think this is evidence of his real character or lack thereof.
Matt Frei: You worked very closely with him. How does he operate? What is his modus operandi when it comes to people around him, people that he relies on for government?
John Bolton: I think as you can tell by the turnover of officials in some of the most important positions really exceeded any administration in recent American history, that he insists then, but is even more insistent now, not on what some people call loyalty to him. Loyalty is a virtue. It’s a good thing. He wants fealty from his advisers. He wants submission. And he thinks that’s good for him. Ironically, it’s certainly not going to be good for the country. Ironically, it’s not going to be good for him either to be surrounded by a bunch of yes men and yes women.
Matt Frei: Of course, he would say, and his defenders would say, and many people who voted for him would say, is that all he’s really doing is taking on a sclerotic bureaucracy and what he would describe as the deep state.
John Bolton: Look, I have said for decades now, for example, that the State Department needs a cultural revolution. So I’m quite familiar with the bureaucracy. There are ways of doing it, ways of doing it. What Trump is doing really is getting in his own way, because this kind of approach, which is very careless of the secondary effects, I think doesn’t achieve what he thinks it will achieve and will actually build up resistance to what would otherwise be legitimate objectives.
Matt Frei: When it comes to abroad, when it comes to capitals around the world looking at how to respond to Trump, is there such a thing as a Trump doctrine that has emerged so far?
John Bolton: No, because he doesn’t think in philosophical terms, strategic terms, policy terms. He thinks anecdotally, episodically, ad hoc, seen through the prism of what benefits Donald Trump. I said in my book, if you took all of his decisions in the first term, they’d be out there like a big archipelago of dots. You could try to connect one with another if you wanted to. Good luck. He can’t even connect them.
Matt Frei: Now, what about specific issues like Iran? He talks tough on Iran, but now he’s also saying there might be a deal. He was slightly less tough on Russia in the past. Now he’s being tough again. So there’s some inconsistency there. Can you see through all that, to take some kind of pattern?
John Bolton: I think it’s fair to say that for Trump, everything is solvable by a deal. Zelenskyy should have made a deal after Russia invaded. Taiwan should make a deal with China. You know, whatever the issue is, he’ll make a deal. And maybe that works in real estate, but it sure doesn’t work in international geopolitics.