As has been rumored for weeks, Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster, has officially resigned.
His replacement is former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Fox News contributor, chair of an anti-Muslim think tank, John Bolton.
Bolton first gained worldwide attention during the George W. Bush administration, when as UN envoy, he advocated military force as a means to promote U.S. goals around the globe, including the 2003 Iraq invasion.
He maintains that approach for dealing with North Korea and Iran, making him another member of the Trump administration to favor military intervention over diplomacy.
Last month, Bolton published a commentary arguing for a first strike against North Korea, citing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles as posing an imminent threat. He rejects the claim North Korea can be contained and deterred.
Bolton dubbed Donald Trump’s inflammatory speech to the United Nation in September “the best speech of the Trump presidency.”
To Fox News, he said:
“He [Trump] made what I think is a key point when you look at what our next steps might be. He said ‘denuclearization is the only acceptable future.’ And that means, in his view, we don’t end this present crisis with North Korea still in possession of a nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. On Iran, he was just as direct. As you mentioned, his criticism of the behavior of the regime toward its own people. And then he came of course to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and said, as he has said many times before, it’s one of the ‘worst, ‘most one-sided’ deals in American history, ‘an embarrassment’ to the country, and we haven’t ‘heard the last of it.'”
Bolton is a conspiracy theorist who claimed on Fox News that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacking was a “false flag operation” intended to falsely implicate Russia, and that supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) were actually responsible for it.
Remember Benghazi? Bolton weighed in on that too, accusing Republicans on the House Select Committee of being “obstructed” when trying to uncover new information on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he accused of faking a “diplomatic illness” to avoid testifying.
He also has a relationship with anti-Muslim extremists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
Geller endorsed Bolton when he was President Bush’s pick for U.N. ambassador, and Bolton penned the forward to the 2010 book Geller and Spencer wrote.
Moreover, Bolton chairs the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute, purportedly “dedicated to educating the public about what the mainstream media fails to report.” It has disseminated the debunked claim that ensconced within certain cities are “no-go zones,” Muslim-dominated neighborhoods off limits to non-Muslims.
Today we learned John Bolton worked with data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica on targeting YouTube videos to “psychographic” profiles of American voters.
Cambridge Analytica executive, Robert Murtfeld, stated in an email about the 2014 collaboration with the John Bolton Super Pac:
“[The video project] used our psychographic data to create ads targeting people based on their personalities.”
About a propaganda ad promoting the idea that former President Barack Obama opposed border security, opening with Bolton looking into the camera and saying “terrorists love porous borders,” Murtfield said:
“This ad targets people high in neuroticism, who tend to be anxious and to see the world as a dangerous place.”
Bolton’s promotion is completely appropriate for the “war cabinet” Trump is building. De-certifying the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, engaging in possible nuclear confrontation with North Korea, and stoking anti-Muslim sentiments, evident in Trump’s promotion of former CIA head Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson, all seem to be common interests.
John Bolton officially begins his new role April 9.
Image credit: The New Yorker
