John Bolton on the Trump White House after 100 Days

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

What have we learned about the White House in Trump's second term? How are decisions made in the most consequential areas of national security? During the past week, Trump fired National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. To discuss this and many other matters, we are joined again by John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor in the Trump White House from 2018 to 2019. Bolton shares the perspective of an insider who understands Donald Trump—and government at a high level of granularity. He describes Waltz’s dismissal as emblematic of a White House in chaos. As he puts it: “more and more decisions will be made in the White House and fewer decisions in the cabinet in the second Trump term than in recent presidencies. That’s the clear message going ahead.” Assessing the price we pay, Bolton states: “[Trump] is burning through decades of effort to build up goodwill, trust, faith, reliance on America. Our friends all over the world are saying, 'You’ve taken leave of your senses.’"

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined again by John Bolton, former national security advisor to the president,
0:23.4	former senior official in the State Department and the Justice Department, someone I've known for a long time and worked with when I was in government ages and ages and ages ago.
0:32.0	John and I, we had a conversation the day before Thanksgiving, I think it was, very late November.
0:37.2	So not that long ago.
0:38.9	And that stands up quite well.
0:40.1	I think some of your concerns and your predictions really about what might happen.
0:44.2	But let's talk about, we're talking on Monday, May 5th, on Friday, Thursday maybe it was.
0:49.8	Mike Walts, one of your successors as National Security Advisor was fired by Donald Trump.
0:56.3	We now have this unusual situation, Secretary of State acting also as National Security
1:01.3	Advisor, at least for a while.
1:02.4	But anyway, John, thanks so much for joining me and joining us again today.
1:06.7	Yeah, glad to be with you.
1:07.8	A lot going on.
1:09.1	It is amazing.
1:10.2	In November, you were worried that Trump, much more than in the first term
1:14.2	and a reaction, I suppose, against the first term where people like you, as he saw it, constrained
1:18.8	him and so forth, was going to have, as you put it, yes men and yes women and just demand not only
1:24.2	loyalty, which is appropriate, but fealty. And so here we are a few months,
1:30.4	like, well, three months into the administration just over that. How much does that characterize
1:36.4	what's happening? And then talk about Mike Walts in particular and his fate after 100 days.
1:43.4	Well, I'm afraid, unfortunately, I turned out to be right.
1:46.4	In case after case, we see people simply accepting what Trump says without doing what
	...

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