And what so many are asking, with the stakes so high. You felt no obligation at all to tell the American People about this . Your critics saying, why is he making a profit on this now . Now, the future, what happens in the five months until november . Are you saying that all decisions the president makes were driven by reelection . I didnt see anything where that wasnt the major factor. I dont think hes fit for office. I dont think he has the competence to carry out the job. The room where it happened. If the book gets out, hes broken the law and i would think that he would have criminal problems. This is the book that President Trump does not want the American People to read. And maybe hes not telling the truth, hes been known not to tell the truth, a lot. John bolton is the highest ranking official to write an insider account of his experience inside trumps white house. Why is this the book President Trump doesnt want anyone to read . Because this is a book of facts. So why wouldnt President Trump want to know about those facts . Because i think it shows a pattern quite contrary to the image he would like to convey, of a decisive president who knows something about what hes doing. Bolton has been defined by fierce ideology. He was once ambassador to the United Nations and served the three previous republican president s. He is an aggressive promoter of a hawkish, strong projection of American Power around the world. Many of us thought that bolton going in with that portfolio, there could be some conflict. On april 9th, 2018, bolton started his job as trumps Third National security adviser in less than 15 months. Breaking right now, john bolton is in, good news, as National Security adviser. John bolton is the right guy at the right time. I think hes going to be a fantastic representative of our team. Hes highly respected by everybody in this room. You are going to do a fantastic job, and i appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Its an honor to be here. But john bolton is about to join a revolving door of advisers. Lets go back. So you walk in to the white house. Youd worked for three other president s, both bushes and reagan. What was immediately different about the Trump White House . This was not like a white house i had ever seen before. It was not functioning in the same way as any of the three previous president s i had worked for. From his first day in office, trump was a president unlike any other. Were not going to let the fake news tell us what to do. Unpredictable and often incendiary. If youre not happy here, then you can leave. Thats what i said in a tweet, which i guess some people think is controversial. A lot of people love it, by the way. Donald trump is a reality tv star turned president of the United States of america. He likes the tv moments. He also thrives on chaos. Is that your bible . Its a bible. Even the daily schedule at the white house was unorthodox. What most people found striking was that trumps official day didnt start until almost lunchtime. Trump was not loafing during the morning. He talked to all manner of people. Who were those outsiders he was listening to . I dont really know. I think they were friends. Sometimes he would say a very wise person told me x, or somebody who really knows this stuff told me y. What were his briefings like . Was he reading his briefings . Well, my experience was he very rarely read much. The Intelligence Briefings took place perhaps once or twice a week. Is that unusual . Its very unusual. They should take place every day. The president should read extensively the material hes given. Its not clear to me that he read much of anything. There was just an unwillingness on the part of the president , i think, to do systematic learning so that he could make the most informed decisions. Im a very stable genius. The president has referred to himself as a stable genius. Is that what you saw . Really . How can anybody call himself a stable genius . He did say it a couple times when i was in his presence. And i just didnt react to him. You wrote the president was not just uninformed, but stunningly uninformed. Can you give us some examples . Well, there were things that we went over again and again and again that just didnt seem to sink in. Like, why was the Korean Peninsula partitioned in 1945 at the end of world war ii, and what did that lead to, and how did we get to that point . You say in the book that trump asked general john kelly if finland was part of russia. He said those things, absolutely. And when youre dealing with somebody who asks questions like that, its very hard to know how to proceed. Would you say anything to him about this . Well, you dont you dont necessarily say to any president , you know, mr. President , you really gotta buckle down here and do your lessons. So, no, i didnt do it that way. But i certainly tried on a couple of occasions with, i think, success from time to time. From the beginning, the Trump White House was a family affair. Both his soninlaw jared and his daughter ivanka hold key positions as his advisers. They even have a disparaging nickname. They call them javanka because theyre sort of seen as one and the same. Somebody once said to me, in the Trump White House theres family, and everyone else is the help. Who held the most power in the white house . It varied from time to time. But i think the sustained answer to that question over time is Jared Kushner. Thank you, jared. My star. He is so great. If you cant produce peace in the middle east, nobody can. Jared Kushner Deals with everything. Think about it. When it comes to middle east peace, jared, you deal with that. When it comes to dealing with china, jared, you take the lead on that. When it came to the coronavirus pandemic, suddenly there he was again. Jared kushner has a very broad portfolio. Is he the most qualified person for those jobs . I really dont really want to get into the to the family aspect of this. The focus ought to be on the president. But if Jared Kushner is the second most powerful person in that white house, why cant you answer that question . Well, i think a question i would put in turn to conservative republicans is, how do you feel about that . While reluctant to get personal about the trump family in our interview, bolton did share a story about the president and his daughter after news broke of ivankas private email account. Ivanka trump under fire, accused of doing exactly what her own father campaigned against. Using a private email account to conduct government business. You share one story of how policy was essentially shaped to protect the trump family interest. After u. S. Intelligence reportedly determined the Saudi Crown Prince played a role in the killing of jamal khashoggi, trump issued a statement, you say, to divert attention from ivanka, who was Getting Press for her emails, her private email account. Well, the president said that. Now, in fact, he also strongly believed in the statement that he made about u. S. Policy visavis saudi arabia, despite the killing of khashoggi, because of the arms sales relationship and other things. But it was very much on his mind that day that his daughter was taking some heavy hits in the press and absolutely guaranteed this diverted everyones attention. And he said that . Yes. But whats garnered a lot of attention is boltons assertion that he saw a disturbing pattern behind the president s Decision Making process. You say that you were astonished by what you saw. A president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation . Well, i think he was so focused on the reelection that longerterm considerations fell by the wayside. There was considerable emphasis on the photo opportunity and the press reaction to it, and little or no focus on what such meetings did for the bargaining position of the United States. Are you saying that all decisions the president made were driven by reelection . Thank you very much, el paso, thank you very much. I didnt see anything where that wasnt the major factor. So a lot of people have complained that he has a short Attention Span, and he doesnt focus. I want to say when it comes to reelection, his Attention Span was infinite. Its just too bad there wasnt more of that when it came to National Security. You describe the president as erratic, foolish, behaved irrationally, bizarrely. You cant leave him alone for a minute. He saw conspiracies behind rocks. He couldnt tell the difference between his personal interests and the countrys interests. I dont think hes fit for office. I dont think he has the competence to carry out the job. There really isnt any guiding principle that i was able to discern other than, whats good for Donald Trumps reelection. He calls you a traitor. What would you call him . Coming up. Reliability 13 times in a row. Nbeatable this network is one less thing i have to worry about. vo then you give people more plans to mix and match, so you only pay for what you need. Verizon unlimited plan is so reasonable, they can stay on for the rest of their lives. Awww. vo you include the best in entertainment and you offer it all starting at 35. Because everyone deserves the best. This is unlimited built right. Only on verizon. So we collaborate ocean spray works with nature every day to farm in a Sustainable Way for spending a perfectly reasonable amount of time on the couch with tacos from grubhub . Grubhubs gonna reward you for that with a 5 off perk. doorbell rings [crowd] grubhub fireworks exploding north korea, the most secretive nation on the planet. Fueled by power, loyalty, and greed. From its millionman military to its eerie, forced conformity, a nation living in fear. The best way to understand north korea is that its a 25million person prison camp. And its ruled by the worlds only hereditary communist dictatorship. Kim jongun, known as Supreme Leader to his people, an International Outlaw to much of the world. North korea is a poor country. People starve there, and this for decades, this regime has spent untold amounts of money developing this nuclear and Ballistic Missile program. This is the heart of their power. You have always been a hardliner on north korea. And yet, there you were with a president who wanted to meet with kim jongun. What concerns did you have about that . Well, i was very concerned that he would give away things that he didnt need to give away. To be clear, i dont think north korea is ever going to voluntarily give up its Nuclear Weapons program. For decades, north korea has been building up its nuclear arsenal. North korea should have been handled 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, but ill fix the mess. So when kim launched a long range missile that could potentially reach the United States with a nuclear weapon, trump went ballistic. We begin with north korea. President trump warning the regime today against making any more threats toward the u. S. North korea better get their act together or theyre going to be in trouble like few nations ever have been in trouble. The president had a nickname for the dictator. Rocket man. Rocket man. Little rocket man. And a warning. Rocket man is on a Suicide Mission for himself and for his regime. Kim jongun is saying equally incendiary things out of north korea. And hes testing increasingly sophisticated rockets capable of delivering Nuclear Weapons. He has been very threatening, beyond a normal statement, and as i said they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power the likes this world has never seen before. It was a very dangerous, very unsettled time. I was really being tough, and so was he. We went back and forth, and then we fell in love, okay . Kim sent the president an oversized love letter. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they were great letters. It was the beginning of the bromance. Do you think he really believes that kim jongun loves him . I dont know any other explanation. I think kim jongun gets a huge laugh out of this. I mean, these letters are written by some functionary in the north Korean Workers Party agitprop office. And yet the president has looked at them as evidence of this deep friendship. Even if it were a deep personal relationship, it doesnt change the fact kim jongun is never going to give up his Nuclear Weapons program. But nobody should misunderstand that a personal relationship is somehow equivalent to better relations between the two nations. If we make a deal, i think kim jongun is going to be very, very happy. I really believe hes going to be very happy. When the two leaders met for the first time in singapore for their historic summit, it was high theater. Donald trump wanted to put on the Foreign Policy show of a lifetime. You saw the american flags flying next to the north korean flags, the stage set. Kim jongun coming from one side of the stage, donald trump coming from the other. Smiling like they had been old friends. Why is this Diplomatic Initiative so important to President Trump . When we were in singapore, one of the things he said over and over again was to ask how many press people were going to be present for his final press conference. And i think the final number, it was a very large number, as it should have been, 400, 500. By the time we left singapore, he was at 2,000. Thats what he was focused on. That he had had this enormous photo opportunity, the first time an american president has met with the leader of north korea. John bolton saw the bargaining firsthand. Behind closed doors, in the photo, he is there, in the room where it happened. Take us inside that room. The press mob, as you call them, comes in. As soon as they leave, you say, the flattery began with kim jongun. Right. Well, everybody president has a style. But the idea that just this oleaginous layer of compliments to this brutal dictator would convince him that you could make a deal with donald trump, i thought, was both strikingly naive and dangerous. He told kim jongun we would give up what he called the war games on the Korean Peninsula. The president didnt seem to understand that the war games, as he called them, were critical to american and south korean ability to be ready to withstand pressure from north korea. And to pull down these engagements, these exercises, because they displeased kim jongun, i just thought was an act of folly. Just a month before that summit, you praised the president s skill, saying he would size kim up, and that he has got an outstanding ability to do that. Did you believe that when you said it . Not particularly. But, you know, one of the functions of an Administration Official is to defend the administration. The summit was over but the bromance was in full bloom. Trumps nickname for kim jongun was rocket man. Well, he gave him an elton john cd. Im a rocket man and he tried to explain that calling him rocket man was actually a compliment. And i dont think weve heard from kim jongun what he thought of elton johns song. But that would thatll be an interesting tidbit in history. But this is the kind of focus that leads you to wonder whether theres an ability to discern whats cosmetic here from whats truly serious. And you think what he did there is dangerous . I think when youre dealing with the power of Nuclear Weapons in the hands of an irrational regime, not taking that as seriously as he should have was a big mistake. Donald trump got a lot. The u. S. Itself got nothing from that. The United States gave much more legitimacy to this dictator. And didnt accomplish anything toward any meaningful discussion on the elimination of their Nuclear Weapons program. Did you tell him at any time about the things youre now telling the world . Well, i certainly tried to. I said at one point, mr. President , hes the dictator of a rat [ bleep ] Little Country that doesnt deserve a meeting with you. The president s response to that was, you know, you have a lot of hostility. Of course, i have more hostility. But you have a lot of hostility. They would meet twice more, trump walking away from a summit in hanoi as kims demands hardened. Sometimes you have to walk. And this was one of those times. Only to show up months later at the dmz. Trump becoming the First American president to step into north korea. Would you like me to step across . I would be very proud to do that. But trumps highstakes gamble has gotten him nowhere with denuclearization. The man who brought us the art of the deal failing to secure one. As we sit here today, would you say the threat from north korea is greater today than when President Trump took office . The threat from north korea today is absolutely greater. Because while all these Photo Opportunities were taking place, theres absolutely no doubt that north koreas work on both its nuclear and Ballistic Missile programs continued. So on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate trumps ability to make a deal on north korea . Well, i think it turned out clearly at this point to be zero. Its not that hard to make a deal, if youre prepared to give away enough. And if you dont fully