John Bolton, who served as former US President Donald Trump’s security adviser in 2018 and 2019, has warned that his former boss is a threat to US national security. He fears that leaders such as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China could take advantage of this.
Speaking to Times Radio, Mr Bolton said he hopes Mr Trump is not a nominee for the Republican Party primaries.
He said: “As a general proposition Trump was not fit to be president, and my assessment was he did cause damage to US national security and to the country as a whole.
“All of that was repairable…what I feared was that in a second term, both at the national security level and domestically, he would cause more permanent damage.
“That’s why in my view he shouldn’t get the Republican nomination in 2024.”
“These are hard men. They know exactly what they think China and Russia’s interests are and they pursue them. Donald Trump is pursuing something completely different.”
Mr Trump raised eyebrows with some of his foreign policy decisions during his time in the White House.
In 2018, a trade war between China and the US started when the former President imposed extra tariffs and trade barriers on Chinese goods, accusing the country of unfair trade practices.
He also met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on a number of occasions to try and push the country towards denuclearisation but failed to do so.
Mr Bolton also criticised his former boss last week after the Republican Party underwhelmed in the US’ midterm elections.
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Many of the candidates Mr Trump had backed performed poorly, provoking the security expert to say Mr Trump’s act is “old and tired” and urge the Republicans to go for a “fresh face”.
He told the Guardian: “There are a lot of reasons to be against Trump being the nominee but the one I’m hearing now as I call around the country, talking to my supporters and others about what happened on 8 November, is the number of people who have just switched Trump off in their brain.
“Even if they loved his style, loved his approach, loved his policies, loved everything about him, they don’t want to lose and the fear is, given the results on 8 November, that if he got the nomination, not only would he lose the general election, but he would take an awful lot of Republican candidates down with him.”
Mike Pence, Vice President under Mr Trump, has also seen his relationship with the businessman-turned-politician strain in recent months. Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley are other senior Republican Party figures to distance themselves from Mr Trump and his 2024 bid.