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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files, with your host David Axelrod.

John Bolton has been a fixture on the American diplomatic and political scene for nearly half a century,

along the bet noir of the left for his strongly interventionist views and loudly expressed distrust of global institutions.

He suddenly finds himself under a soft from the right after splitting with President Trump, whom he served as National Security Advisor.

His strongly critical account of life with this President, the room where it happened, is a National Best Seller, and the subject of ongoing legal proceedings.

I sat down the other day with Ambassador Bolton at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, and here's that conversation.

Pastor John Bolton, good to see you. I learned right before we went on the air that you were at the University of Chicago 10 years ago on this day, speaking to the Federalist Society and the College Republican. So welcome back.

You have better information than I do.

These guys are keeping track of you, obviously. So as there are many other people, because you've made a lot of news lately, I want to talk about your book, I want to talk about your life and your own journey.

But first I just need to ask you some questions as someone who spent a fair amount of time with the President of the United States to interpret the events of the last few weeks through the prism of that experience.

We all know the President became ill. He had the coronavirus. To this day, we don't know exactly when he got it. We know a lot of his aids have it as well.

The doctors reports have been sketchy. There hasn't been any in person briefing in many days. But what is going on? What do you make of that? What do you imagine is going on inside the White House? And is he just calling all these shots himself?

Well, I think he is calling all the shots himself. I think the behavior that the public has seen this past 10 days or so may seem unusual to people who haven't followed it over the past four years.

But from my perspective, there was no difference really in how he performed. He has a feeling that by talking about the reality he wants to have, if he talks about it often enough, if he convinces enough people that he's right, if he intimidates other people and do not arguing with him, he can make it real.

So when was he diagnosed with COVID-19? He'll tell us what day it is. I'm sure. And others will believe it. Is he fully cured of it now? Is he really not transmitting the disease? Well, he apparently thinks so. And so does the White House physician.

But all of this is part and parcel of the Trump personality. And I don't think at this stage that there's anybody left at the White House who other than the family who can really say no to him.

What about his state of mind? I take your point that this is Trump. I mean, in a sense, his handling of his own virus has been a microcosm of how he's tried to handle the virus generally, which is to impose his will on events and persuade people that things are different than they appear to be.

But he's also been on significant medications for this, including steroids. And you know, I watched him last night at an event. And he seemed particularly wound up at that event. And I was wondering if there is, if there should be any concern about his state of mind right now.

I don't think it's any different than when he was not on steroids. I think, I think to me, I've watched it all just look like another day at the office. And, you know, I think anybody gets an adrenaline high when you're in a rally like that, that part, I don't find surprising. But this insistence, this obsession with one thing or another is it's come up, for example, the drive around Walter Reed the day before he was released.

And so he's going to do it. And by God, he was going to do it. And you know, when you're president, that you don't have to eat broccoli. If you don't want to and you can go and arrive with the secret service.

So he is, I think he must see that the political environment for him is becoming increasingly problematic. And so his desire to do what he wants to do in the last weeks of the campaign, I think becomes more insistent.

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