The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  Things worsened further on June 20. In a “zero tolerance” policy, Trump had been prepared to separate children from their parents (or people claiming to be their parents, but who were frequently human traffickers) at the border, as prior Administrations, including Obama’s, had done. But under political pressure, Trump reversed himself, in effect hanging Nielsen and Sessions out to dry. After the Executive Order revoking “zero tolerance” was signed, Kelly just went home. He confirmed to me the next day his view that Trump had “sold out Sessions and Nielsen,” but no one had a real plan what to do next. Immigration was also jumbled in with the negotiation and ratification efforts to modify the NAFTA agreement with Canada and Mexico; foreign aid programs in Central America; and enormous turf fights among the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, State, and others over who had what responsibility. These problems were due largely to the chaos in domestic policy making, a problem that showed no signs of abating.

  Despite my efforts to stay out of the immigration stew, it kept chasing me. On October 4, Kushner, now involved in immigration because of the spillover from the NAFTA revision effort, came to see me. He said Nielsen and her department were negotiating with Mexico’s government with no State Department clearance, an obvious process foul if true. A few days later, on a Saturday, Kushner called to say Trump had suggested that he take over the immigration portfolio; he had declined because he felt Kelly was protecting Nielsen from the consequences of her own incompetence, which made the problem unfixable. “What about Bolton?” Trump asked, “Could he take it over?” Kushner said he doubted I would be interested, but Trump replied, “John’s great. He gets things done. He brings me all these decisions and stuff. Really great. Can you ask him if he’d do it?” Kushner said whomever Trump selected would be in a fight with Kelly, and Trump replied, “John’s not afraid of fights. He’ll take him [Kelly] on.” Wonderful, I thought. Great Saturday.

  On Monday morning, Columbus Day, I met with Stephen Miller, the White House policy lead on immigration. As we were talking, Kushner walked in and asked, “Can I join the conspiracy?” I had already e-mailed Pompeo, who had agreed Mexico-related immigration issues had to be brought more effectively into the NSC process, which had been frustrated for months if not years primarily by the Department of Homeland Security’s lack of cooperation. The department just didn’t want to be coordinated. My personal view was that America would benefit from far more legal, controlled immigration, whereas illegal immigration was undermining the foundational sovereignty principle that the US decided who was allowed in, not the would-be immigrants. I was clear on one thing: Nielsen’s effort to bring in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to help us decide who to admit to the US was badly flawed. We could hardly cede such basic sovereign decisions to an international body.

  Later in the week, after an unrelated meeting in the Oval, attended by Nielsen, Pompeo, and others, Trump was pounding away again: “We’re doing the worst job on the border of any Administration. I ran and won on the border. We have a national emergency,” he said, and he then riffed on finding money in the Pentagon budget to build the border wall he had long promised. Trump’s agitation was based in part on sensational media reporting about “caravans of illegal immigrants” heading through Central America toward our border, which he saw as visible proof he was not meeting his 2016 campaign pledge. Pointing to Nielsen, Trump said, “You’re in charge of border security,” and then, pointing to Pompeo, he said, “You’re not involved.” This was directly contrary to what Trump had told Kushner on Saturday and convinced me I was happy to be as little involved in this exercise as possible. On and on it went between Trump and Nielsen. At one point, Pompeo whispered to me, “Why are we still here?” Good question. We needed to find a way out of this train wreck before Trump blamed us for the collapse of his border policy!

  According to Kushner, however, this latest encounter with Nielsen convinced Trump I should have control of the issue. “Kirstjen is not mentally able to do it,” said Kushner. Two days later, Trump told me, “You take over the southern border. She loses every case. She’s so weak.” Trump wanted to declare a national emergency and had already talked to John Eisenberg about it. “You have my full authorization,” said Trump, “the number one thing is the southern border. You and me. You are the fucking boss.” A few hours later, with just Kelly and me in the Oval, Trump said, “I told John to take control of the border.” This was getting serious. I decided to lay out for Trump the process required to get control of illegal immigration issues. If he agreed to it, I would step in, but if not, I had plenty of other work to do.

  I drafted a one-page “plan” that included giving lead international negotiation authority to the State Department, rewriting all the relevant Homeland Security and Justice regulations, proposing sweeping new legislation on the issue, vesting policy development authority in the NSC, replacing Nielsen and Sessions, and more. I was writing for a one-person audience, but I showed drafts to Pompeo, Miller, Kushner, Eisenberg, and a few others, who generally concurred. In the meantime, the caravan issue was growing steadily more neuralgic. Trump, tweeting prodigiously, asked that Executive Orders closing the borders be drafted, and the White House atmosphere grew increasingly febrile. On the morning of October 18, Pompeo and I were in my office talking about the Khashoggi affair when Kelly asked both of us to come to his office. There, a mass meeting (perhaps fifteen people) was in progress on the Mexico border, which Kelly summarized when Pompeo and I entered. He then asked Nielsen to describe her plan, which had the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees staffing processing facilities on the Guatemala-Mexico border. The High Commissioner’s office would separate out legitimate refugees, who could then enter the United States (or another country), from those not qualifying, who would return to their countries of origin.

  Kelly asked Pompeo what he thought, and he responded slowly, likely knowing little about what Nielsen was saying. I jumped in (and Pompeo happily receded) to point out that the High Commissioner had no real role in this kind of immigration processing work; that its budget and personnel were already overstrained by, among other things, the Venezuelan refugee crisis; and that in any case, the US shouldn’t subcontract decisions on admission to the US to the United Nations. Nielsen couldn’t answer these points, so I continued to probe on what the refugee agency’s role would be as she stumbled through her responses. Kelly asked, “Well then, what’s your plan, John?” Of course, my plan was something I had no intention of discussing in a stadium-sized crowd before I had even shown it to Trump. I simply said, “Yes, I have a plan, which he [Trump] asked for, and which I will discuss with him.” That caused Nielsen to do a flounce and turn her back on me, saying “Huh!” or something like that. I said, “That’s exactly why I want to see the President alone.” The conversation meandered around for a few minutes more, nearing ten a.m., when I said to Kelly, “John, we should get down to the Oval to talk Saudi Arabia,” just to remind everyone that the rest of the world was still out there. Off Pompeo, Kelly, and I went. Suffice it to say, this was not the “profanity-laced shouting match” the credulous media later reported.

  In the Oval, we were addressing the Khashoggi issue with Trump when Madeleine Westerhout came in, saying Kushner wanted to report by phone on his conversation with Mexico’s Foreign Minister. Kelly asked loudly, “Why is Jared calling the Mexicans?”

  “Because I asked him to,” said Trump in an equally loud voice. “How else are we going to stop the caravans?”

  “Kirstjen Nielsen is working on this,” said Kelly, still loudly, and Trump shot back, “None of you other geniuses have been able to stop the caravans,” at which point Kelly stomped out of the Oval, Trump waving his hand dismissively at Kelly’s back as he left. This conversation could qualify as “shouting,” but there was no profanity here either. Kushner, now on the speakerphone, described his call with Luis Videgaray, while Pompeo steamed quietly, since Kushner was once again doing his job. There w
as some further desultory conversation, and then Pompeo and I headed back to Kelly’s office. (In a December conversation with Trump as he decided on Kelly’s successor, Trump acknowledged that this exchange with Kelly was the “shouting match” about which the press had spilled so many electrons.)

  Several people were milling around in Kelly’s outer office. He called Pompeo and me in; said, “I’m out of here”; and walked out. Somewhat dazed, I suppose, Pompeo and I spoke further on Saudi Arabia, but it then hit us that Kelly meant something more than just “you can use my office” when he walked out. I opened the door to ask where Kelly was, but no one knew. I went into the hallway; saw him speaking to someone; pulled him into the Roosevelt Room, which was empty; and shut the door. This was our second emotional conversation, even more intense than the first. “I’ve commanded men in combat,” he said, “and I’ve never had to put up with shit like that,” referring to what had just happened in the Oval.

  I could see his resignation coming, so I asked, “But what is the alternative if you resign?”

  Kelly said, “What if we have a real crisis like 9/11 with the way he makes decisions?”

  I asked, “Do you think it will be better if you leave? At least wait until after the election. If you resign now, the whole election could go bad.”

  “Maybe it would be better that way,” he answered bitterly, so I said, “Whatever you do will be honorable, but there’s nothing positive about the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders having more authority.”

  He answered, “I’m going out to Arlington,” presumably to visit his son’s grave, which he did at serious times. We knew this because it happened so often.

  I left the Roosevelt Room for Kelly’s office, where Pompeo was still waiting before going out to speak to the press about Khashoggi. After his press gaggle, we spoke in my office about what to do, Kelly having left. It was grim. “Mattis is always overseas,” Pompeo said, “the VP is in Mississippi talking about religious freedom, and the only thing Mnuchin thinks about is covering his ass. This will just leave you and me,” worrying that Kelly could go at any time. “If he [Trump] wants to know who the real warriors are, just look around [meaning us]. And Kelly is part of that.” I agreed. Realizing how bad it all sounded, Pompeo said, “This whole thing could end up being the Donald, Ivanka, and Jared show!”

  In the midst of all this, in the early afternoon, I showed Trump my one-page immigration plan. He read through it and said he agreed with it, but added, “You know, most of this I can’t do until after the election,” which I said I understood. He asked if he could keep the one-pager, folded it, and put it in his suit coat pocket. The ball was in his court. And from my perspective, that’s where it stayed. The immigration issue rolled on, but largely without me. I had made my suggestions, which may or may not have worked had they been fully carried out, and ultimately Trump did pick bits and pieces of them. But he did it his own way in his own time, which was his prerogative. Immigration issues stumbled along, rather than forming a coherent policy.

  * * *

  During the immigration controversy came the bombshell of the disappearance and then the assassination of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Trump’s handling of Khashoggi’s murder was in stark contrast to his usual decision-making.

  On October 8, Kushner asked how we should respond to the growing storm. My advice to the Saudis was to get the facts out immediately, whatever they were, and get it over with. Kushner agreed, and the next day we spoke with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, emphasizing how seriously this issue was already viewed. I urged the Crown Prince to find out exactly what had happened to Khashoggi and then publish the report before people’s imaginations exploded. Pompeo later made the same point to him. I also proposed we send the Saudi Ambassador in Washington back to Riyadh to get the facts and then come back and brief us. This was unorthodox, but the Ambassador was the Crown Prince’s younger brother and could reinforce firsthand what the temperature was in Washington.

  Unlike with so many other issues, however, Trump had essentially already decided on his response, saying in a pretaped interview for 60 Minutes for the coming weekend that he wasn’t going to cut off arms sales to the Kingdom. On Saturday, when we welcomed Pastor Brunson to the White House after his release from Turkey, I suggested Pompeo go to Saudi Arabia, rather than sending a lower-ranking official, which he and Trump liked. No one could say we weren’t taking this seriously. Trump raised the idea with King Salman on October 15, and the King said he would welcome Pompeo’s visit. Trump was feeling pressure from the US media, but the pressure was unexpectedly moving him toward stronger public support for the Kingdom, not less. Pompeo’s whirlwind trip bought some time, during which the Saudis would have more opportunity to get the facts out, but Trump was not waiting. The Saudis subsequently published their version of the events and fired several senior officials. The Saudi report didn’t satisfy most analysts, but it reflected a narrative that obviously wasn’t going to change. During this period, through tweets and statements, Trump supported the emerging Saudi version and never wavered from both the US-Saudi alliance generally or the massive arms sales already negotiated with the Kingdom.

  With the media in a foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy, Trump decided to issue an unequivocal statement of support for Mohammed bin Salman, which he essentially dictated to Pompeo. The text was utterly unqualified and thus risked harming Trump himself if the facts changed. It was not all that difficult to make a few editorial changes to build in protection, but Pompeo would not accept any changes or even hold the draft a day for further review. Pompeo said, “He asked for it, and I’m sending it in,” a characteristic “Yes, sir, roger that” answer. The next day, November 20, my birthday, Trump wanted to call bin Salman to tell him the statement was coming out, saying, “We’re doing him a hell of a favor,” namely stating that “whether he did it or not, we’re standing with Saudi Arabia.”

  We debated whether Trump himself would read the statement from the White House podium or whether we would just release the text. “This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump said. “If I read the statement in person, this will take over the Ivanka thing.” (The “Ivanka thing” was a flood of stories about Ivanka’s extensive use of her personal e-mail for government business, which the White House was trying to explain was actually quite different from Hillary Clinton’s extensive use of her personal e-mail for government business.) “Goddamn it, why didn’t she change her phone?” Trump complained. “What a mess we have because of that phone.” Then he turned to Pompeo, settling on his calling the Crown Prince, and said, “Tell him it’s unbelievable, what a great thing I’m doing. Then get his opinion, and we’ll decide what to do.” We decided to issue a statement and have Pompeo answer questions, but there was considerable debate over whether the text should be released before or after the annual ceremony pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey (pun not intended). Sorry, Crown Prince, but we have our priorities. (I met with Turkey’s Foreign Minister that same day, another coincidence.) Pompeo and Trump both ultimately took questions, which Trump had wanted to do anyway. It was an all-Trump show, obvious to everyone except Rand Paul, who tweeted that he thought I had written the statement!

  In hard-nosed geopolitical terms, Trump’s was the only sensible approach. No one excused Khashoggi’s murder, and few doubted it was a serious mistake. Whether or not you liked Saudi Arabia, the monarchy, Mohammed bin Salman, or Khashoggi, we had significant US national interests at stake. Withdrawing support would immediately trigger countervailing efforts by our adversaries in the region to exploit the situation to our detriment. Putin had earlier put it to me most bluntly in Moscow (see Chapter 6) on October 23, saying Russia could sell arms to the Saudis if we didn’t. Trump wasn’t necessarily deciding on the basis of geostrategic reality, but on the US jobs generated by the arms sales, and he ended up in more or less the right place. This approach was exactly Jeane Kirkpatrick’s conclusion in her iconic 1979 essay, “
Dictatorships and Double Standards”2: “Liberal idealism need not be identical with masochism, and need not be incompatible with the defense of freedom and the national interest.”

  * * *

  Personnel management issues, also critical to policy development, portended a series of dramatic changes following the November 2018 congressional elections. Jim Mattis and his staff, for example, had a masterful command of press relations, carefully cultivating his reputation as a “warrior scholar.” One story I was sure the media hadn’t heard from Mattis was one told by Trump on May 25, as Marine One flew back to the White House from Annapolis after Trump’s graduation speech to the Naval Academy. He said Mattis had told him, regarding Trump’s appearing in a scheduled presidential debate with Clinton just days after the Access Hollywood story broke in the press, that “it was the bravest thing he had ever seen anyone do.” Coming from a career military man, that was indeed something. Of course, Trump could have been making it up, but, if not, it showed Mattis knew how to flatter with the best of them.

  There was no doubt Mattis was in troubled waters by the summer of 2018, and he grew steadily weaker as the year unfolded. At about nine forty-five p.m. on Sunday, September 16, Trump called me to ask if I had seen a prominently displayed New York Times article about Mattis3 and “read it carefully,” which I said I had. “I don’t like it,” said Trump. “Mattis is always doing this kind of thing.” I said I thought the article was very unfair to Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel, brought on by the enmity she had earned from Mattis in her early days at the White House, where she resisted Mattis’s efforts to hire Democrats with views incompatible with Trump’s. “She stopped Rex from bringing in some of his people too, right?” Trump asked, which was also true. “What do you think of Mattis?” Trump asked, in line with his management style, which almost no one believed was conducive to building trust and confidence among his subordinates. But he did it all the time. And only a fool would not assume that if he asked me questions about Mattis, he was surely asking others about me. I gave a partial answer, which was both true and important: I said Mattis was “good at not doing what he didn’t want to do” and that he had “a high opinion of his own opinion.” With that, Trump was off, explaining that he didn’t trust Mattis and how tired he was of constant press stories about Mattis’s outwitting Trump. I didn’t say it to Trump, but this was the biggest self-inflicted wound by the “axis of adults.” They thought themselves so smart they could tell the world how smart they were, and Trump wouldn’t figure it out. They were not as smart as they thought.