We have had to long redefine what constitutes a damning conduct in public life during the Trump era. Everything feels like cavalier, up-yours transgression and yet nothing seems to eventually work. Now comes an even more damning insider account from a man who had a direct personal view of what can only be described as skulduggery. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s already fraught memoir ‘The Room Where It Happened’ reveals so many utterly damning details about President Donald Trump’s conduct that one cannot but wonder whether any of that makes any difference any more other than perhaps turning the presidential election against him.
From allegedly offering to do personal favors to dictators around the world by halting criminal investigations against them to brazenly asking China’s President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 election, it seems nothing was off limits. Excerpts in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times reveal such a wide range of alleged transgression as witnessed by Bolton that one is forced to wonder if there is anything more left.
With Xi, it is alleged, the attempt by Trump was to plead that China buy more agricultural products thereby help swing the outcome in his favor. While on Xi, Bolton also reportedly suggests that in order to keep the Chinese leader on his side, Trump was also willing to overlook human rights concerns, including not standing in the way of him continuing to build concentration camps for China’s Muslim Uighur population.
Just one of these specifically or so many others would have long undone any president or presidential aspirant. But not this one, it seems.
As stunning as Bolton’s revelations are, I am not holding my breath for them to be of any serious consequence for President Trump because it appears as if life has offered him a shield that has so far withstood many potentially terminal attacks. The November election could well change that but given the way people have so willingly chosen to mortgage their innate individual intelligence in favor of tribal viciousness I am not sure at all.