On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that Bolton made many mistakes when he served in the administration. “For a guy who couldn’t get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn’t get approved for anything since, ‘begged’ me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying ‘Don’t do it, sir,’ takes the job, mistakenly says, ‘Libyan Model on T.V., and many more mistakes of judgement, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?”
Bolton’s unpublished manuscript of his upcoming book became an important development in Trump’s ongoing impeachment trial this week. Senate Republicans, including Lindsey Graham, have said they support viewing the manuscript.
On Twitter, national security attorney Bradley Moss pointed out that Trump was the one who chose Bolton as his national security adviser. In addition, Moss sarcastically asked if Trump fired whoever hired Bolton.
Many people on Twitter echoed Moss’ remark about firing “the guy who hired John Bolton.” Former Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub tweeted that Trump had just dissed himself. “To hear the president tell it, the president is bad at hiring,” he wrote. “We need to fire the idiot that keeps hirin’ these incompetent deep-state liars,” another user tweeted.
Other Twitter users noted that Trump’s bashing someone he once admired and hired is a familiar process. “It’s amazing how you keep giving top jobs to people you then start calling total losers,” former member of Parliament, blogger and author Louise Mensch tweeted.
Another user shared a cartoon depicting the evolution of White House employment. “My favourite Trump tweets are the ones where he rails against awful, incompetent, dishonest, useless people…who he himself appointed to the most senior jobs in government and once lavished with praise,” Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan wrote.
A few Twitter users took the opportunity to point out more serious consequences of Trump’s Twitter tirade. The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman called Trump’s tweet “a message to [Republican] senators who are soft about the attacks they’ll get if they vote against his interests.”
MSNBC Morning Joe contributor Kurt Bardella said that Trump’s treating the national security adviser position as a “throw-away job” is “further proof that Trump and the GOP could care less about America’s interests.”
The White House and the Trump re-election campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
