Trump fires John Bolton as national security adviser

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had fired National Security Adviser John Bolton after a string of disagreements between the two over how the U.S. should handle North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran.

Trump announced on Twitter that he had asked for Bolton’s resignation, which he received this morning, after the president had “disagreed with many of his suggestions.”

“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning,” Trump said on Twitter.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Trump had asked for Bolton’s resignation on Monday night, and that the resignation was delivered on Tuesday. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Trump and Bolton had not spoken on Tuesday.

Bolton himself said in a tweet that he had offered to resign Monday night, and that the president had said in response that they would “talk about it tomorrow.”

“I offered to resign last night,” Bolton told NBC News via text. “He never asked for it, directly or indirectly. I slept on it, and resigned this morning.” He denied reports that he and Trump had gotten into a heated argument Monday night over the president’s plan to host Taliban leaders at Camp David.

Reports over the weekend that Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence were against Trump on the plan for a Camp David meeting with Taliban leaders was the last straw for Bolton, according to two people familiar with the matter. On Monday, Pence tweeted that the stories were fake but Bolton did not — and that, according to the officials, upset Trump.

One person familiar with the breakdown between the two men said Trump didn’t want Bolton attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York with him later this month.

Asked if the disagreement over the Taliban talks led to Bolton’s dismissal, Grisham said “there was no final straw. There were several issues. They had policy disagreements.”

But speaking on the condition of anonymity, another official said Afghanistan “broke open the bottom of the bag,” in a relationship that had been eroding.

Bolton, known as a fierce infighter, had few allies and was clashing with both Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

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Most recently, the two had sparred over Trump’s desire to have leaders of the Taliban visit Camp David in the days before the Sept. 11 anniversary to finalize peace talks. The idea was strongly opposed by Bolton, even as officials at the State Department argued it could move the parties closer to an agreement, officials said.

Bolton had been deeply skeptical of negotiations with the Taliban. U.S. negotiators have been working under the president’s demand that a drawdown occur before November 2020, when he’s up for re-election.

Bolton had pushed Trump to take a harder line on other regimes he has deemed untrustworthy. Trump, on the other hand, campaigned on the promise to get the U.S. out of conflicts.

While Bolton has previously pushed for striking Iran and regime change, Trump has indicated he would like to sit down with Iranian officials, and that regime change is off the table.

When asked in the past about his divergent views with Bolton’s, Trump has indicated he didn’t have a problem with his national security adviser giving an opinion that differed from his own.

“I have some hawks,” the president said in a Meet the Press interview earlier this summer. “Yeah, John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. If it was up to him he’d take on the whole world at one time, okay? But that doesn’t matter, because I want both sides.”

This is the third national security adviser that Trump will have to replace. His first, Michael Flynn, was in court for a status hearing on Tuesday ahead of his sentencing for lying to U.S. officials. Flynn’s successor, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, said he was retiring after repeated disagreements with Trump.

Trump named Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and undersecretary of state for international security, to the post in a tweet in March 2018. At the time of his appointment, Bolton said in a Fox News interview that he was taken off guard by the tweet.

Trump said that he would name a new national security adviser next week.

Hours before Trump announced his departure, Bolton sent a final public warning on Iran.

“Now that we’re two weeks from #UNGA, you can be sure #Iran is working overtime on deception,” Bolton wrote in a tweet. “Let’s review the greatest hits, starting with the most recent. #Iran denied the Adrian Darya-1 was headed to #Syria, then confirmed today its oil was offloaded there. #IranWebOfLies”

source: nbcnews.com