Download The Room Where It Happened PDF

2020
Title The Room Where It Happened
Authors
Genres Biography: Historical Political & Military Memoirs Books History Of The Americas Politics & Government Political Science & Theory International Relations
Publisher Simon & Schuster
ISBN 9781982148034
As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them.He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place. Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.” The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.
More Books You May Like
Mr Salary : Faber Stories
Mr Salary : Faber Stories
Sally Rooney

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of g...

The Neverending Story
The Neverending Story
Michael Ende

Read the book that inspired the classic coming-of-age film! From award-winning German author Michael Ende, The Neverendi...

Blood of Zeus : Book One
Blood of Zeus : Book One
Meredith Wild

An ancient grudge. A forbidden love. The only thing worse than being a demon is being a Valari. As an undergraduate at L...

On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky

"Radical linguist, philosopher, and activist Noam Chomsky is one of the world's foremost intellectuals. Known for his br...

What If? #2 by Randall Munroe
What If? #2 by Randall Munroe
Randall Munroe

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!An NPR Best Book of 2022"The questions throughout What If? 2 are equal parts brilli...

A Torch Against the Night #2
A Torch Against the Night #2
Sabaa Tahir

"Elias and Laia are running for their lives. Following the events of the Fourth Trial, an army led by Masks hunts the tw...

The Republic by Plato
The Republic by Plato
Plato

Famous philosophical treatise of the 4th century BC concerns itself chiefly with the idea of justice, as well as such Pl...