The Bottom Line

Bolton: Trump ‘didn’t understand what it means to be president’

Former national security adviser says the US needs to ‘get to the post-Trump era’ to avoid further damage to global power.

As national security adviser to President Donald Trump for more than a year, John Bolton was in “the room where it happened”: the inner circle of aides who had almost daily access to the president.

He tells host Steve Clemons that what he saw astonished him: “I believed that inevitably the weight of the responsibilities of the presidency … would affect Trump the same way they did every other American president. And I turned out to be wrong about that.”

Bolton reviews US foreign policy and warns the Biden administration that it will be difficult to recreate the Iran nuclear deal.