Rep. Adam Smith: John Bolton is as out of touch with reality as Trump
Mar 23, 2018, 1:56 PM | Updated: 2:19 pm
Congress member Adam Smith is very “alarmed” over President Trump’s latest staffing shuffle, replacing Gen. H.R. McMaster with Conservative commentator John Bolton as National Security Advisor.
“So I think that it’s very troubling that John Bolton has been named as National Security Advisor,” Smith said in a Facebook live video Friday.
RELATED: Is President Trump going full authoritarian on US?
Smith, a Democrat representing the 9th Congressional District (Tacoma, Bellevue, and parts of Seattle), objects to the switch up. Bolton is a former U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush. He is also a Conservative with hard line views on controversial topics. Smith says that Gen. McMaster was more likely to add some context and differing opinions for President Trump. Bolton, on the other hand, will only feed into calls for war, he says.
It adds up to an advisor who will not work with America’s global neighbors, Smith argues.
You need people with conflicting opinions to make sure that you are getting a proper judgement from everybody. Now, no president needs that more than President Trump, who has shown himself to be very, very quick to reach judgements that have no basis in fact or reality. So he needs people around him who are willing to say, ‘Well Mr. President here are a few facts that maybe you haven’t thought of.’ And General McMaster was one of those. I think that’s why he was fired … John Bolton is very much in favor of going to war with just about everybody, but he has specifically come out and said, ‘You know, we should attack Iran; we should attack North Korea.’
He’s willing to be far more belligerent all across the globe. He’s also one of those people who think that we don’t need to work with any other countries in the world. That the United States ought to be able to force and impose its will on everybody else. That is an enormous mistake and a terrible direction for foreign policy.
The Congress member also points out that Bolton has a poor record when it comes to climate change.
In addition to everything else of course, he’s one of those people who doesn’t believe in climate change … And he has, in the past, stated that he didn’t believe that Russia meddled in our elections … John Bolton seems every little bit as out of touch with reality as the president. And we don’t need two people like that overseeing the national security of this country and the stability and peacefulness of the world.
