The upcoming memoir, due out next week, is titled “The Room Where It Happened” and is described by its publisher Simon & Schuster as “the book Donald Trump doesn’t want you to read.” One particular passage occupying news headlines this week alleges that Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping during a June 2019 summit dinner that his chances of reelection could be improved if Beijing increased its agricultural purchases from American farmers.
“Unfortunately, this is a continuation of a trend,” Norton told host Brian Becker.
“The news cycle is so short these days that all of our attention spans have been obliterated, but people might remember that just several months ago during the impeachment farce, where in the proceedings, Democrats were infuriated because they really wanted John Bolton to testify,” said Norton, who is also the co-host of the Moderate Rebels podcast.
“And you may remember that even at the Academy Awards, Brad Pitt gave a speech, and the first thing he said after he won best actor, I believe, is he said, ‘Well, what a pity that John Bolton can’t testify. Our democracy has been destroyed,’” the writer recalled.
“We see for many months now the rehabilitation of one of the most hawkish people imaginable. John Bolton is not just a neocon, he’s an arch-neocon. This is a guy who has supported every single US war for the past several decades and then some,” he continued.
“Let’s not forget, this is one of the key architects of the criminal invasion of Iraq that left over 1 million Iraqis dead. This is a guy who has fantasized about bombing Iran so much, to such a degree, that he even wrote an article, an op-ed in the New York Times, calling for the US to wage preemptive war on Iran,” Norton added.
“This is a guy who when [American activist and whistleblower] Chelsea Manning sacrificed her freedom and spent years in prison being tortured in order to release information exposing US war crimes, what was John Bolton’s response? John Bolton said that Chelsea Manning should be executed. And now, the liberal so-called resistance is more than willing to turn a blind eye to the horrific crimes of this blood-soaked monster because they can score some cheap, short-term political points against Trump,” Norton continued.
Several Democratic officials have already reacted to some of the excerpts from Bolton’s book. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has also sent a letter to the vice president of the Trump Organization requesting accounting information on the company’s business arrangement with Chinese state-controlled Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Washington Post reported.
“This disturbing revelation raises new questions about other ways in which President Trump benefits personally, and financially, from the Chinese government, including through ongoing business relationships,” Menendez wrote in the letter.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) was also quick to announce on Wednesday that he would be discussing next steps with other House Democratic leaders to garner more information regarding the president’s “abuses and corruption.”
“The Democratic Party, of course, [in] the rest of the world would objectively be considered a right-wing party. It has had right-wing policies for decades,” Norton explained.
“When you have a figure like Trump who is not only a flagrant racist, who is not only a bumbling buffoon, but is also someone who makes the US empire look bad on the international stage, some of these Democrats - their response is, ‘We have to embrace the most hardline elements of the US empire.’ And that’s why when you see them attacking Trump with John Bolton's book, in many cases, they’re attacking Trump, in a way, from the right. They’re saying he’s too sympathetic to China; he’s not beating Xi Jinping over the head and calling him a dictator,” he said.
“Some of these neoconservative-oriented Democrats,” Norton said, “they see someone like John Bolton as an ally in their new cold war.”
