Victor Davis Hanson: Bolton Was Going to Be the Left’s ‘Useful Idiot,’ But Then Trump Won

During Tuesday’s premiere of the podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler discussed the indictment of former national security adviser John Bolton and how his ego got the best of him.  
 
This transcript has been edited for clarity.  

Victor Davis Hanson: He never says, “That’s not my signature on that affidavit. I never said that.” I went through everything he said. He said that he was a victim of lawfare. He said that [President Donald] Trump had a vendetta. He said he didn’t do anything wrong. He said everything but, “I swear under oath, I never transmitted information that was branded confidential or classified to person one and person two and asked them to not disclose the fact that I was transmitting it, and that ended up in Iranian hackers hands that were blackmailing me. I never did that.” He’s never said that.  

Jack Fowler: Look, not name-dropping here, I’ve served on a couple of boards with John Bolton. I like John. So what? Who cares what I like? But watching some video yesterday, something popped up on YouTube … but he did say something. This had to do with the raid on Mar-a-Lago.  

Hanson: Yeah, watched that.  

Fowler: And he was talking about how Trump really knew the use of [classified material] while he was in office, while Trump was president.  

Hanson: Yeah. It was horrible what he said. You remember? He said he takes anything on his desk, French fries, anything that came across his desk, he just grabbed it. He didn’t care. And somebody said, “Well, why did he do it?” And he said, “Because he can.” People were forgetting that.

There’s an article, by the way, in The Atlantic—left-wing, Lisa Jobs-subsidized, very bad magazine, I think. But the guy just says, “Wait a minute, everybody on the Left has got to remember that this is not”—in their view, I think [James] Comey is pretty guilty, but that’s another question—but he said, “This isn’t a Comey thing. This is career prosecutors looking at what he did, and he transmitted confidential information.” Remember, a federal judge who couldn’t stop, it was too late for the book to come out. He warned him and he said, “You have done a disservice to the security of your country, and you have put yourself in future civil and criminal liability exposure, vulnerable.” 

He said that, and if anybody that says, “Well, Victor, yeah, you’re too pro-Trump. It was lawfare,” no, the lawfare was Joe Biden. [Bolton] went on every night for four years after he left, and every time there was a Mar-a-Lago raid or de-balloting or lawfare, they went to him as a go-to person. 

And his whole frame of reference was two expectations. No. 1, Donald Trump is through. He’s done for. He said that. He’s done for. He has no political future. He’ll be in prison the rest of his life. And No. 2, that Joe Biden or Kamala Harris would win the election. Therefore, he was going to be a useful tool, useful idiot for them. 

He was going to go on TV every night and blast Trump. He was gonna be the ultimate archetype of a Never Trumper on the expectation that Trump would never come back to power. And the Democrats would always shield him from his legal exposure and therefore he could do anything.  

And the real lawfare is the Biden [Justice Department] looked at this, and I think it’s pretty clear that he was transmitting classified information to his wife and daughter. And they were even saying things like, “Shh, don’t tell anybody.” And he was assured that as long as he was a critic, nothing would happen to him. He fulfilled the bargain. They did. And then the unthinkable happened. 

Fowler: Well, everything’s projection in this political world, so transferring data illegally, maybe even criminally, in order to write a book to be vindictive and now claiming the charges against him are an act of vindictiveness. I mean, who was being vindictive here?  

Hanson: He was. His whole point was, the moment he went into the White House, he had the expectation that he was going to write the big kiss-and-tell bombshell book. 

So, he started to record every single thing and to give that narrative authority and authenticity and exceptional information that he was transmitting stuff, allegedly, to his wife and daughter with the professed expressed purpose that it not be disclosed and that they not talk about it. And then, as soon as he was going to be fired, he was going be provocative right around the 2020 campaign cycle. 

He said—and I was reading some of them that had been released—“Now the diary ends, and the book begins.” And that’s after he got fired. And then he just took all of those notes, and he used the documents as footnotes, etc., or to the extent that he said that he thought they weren’t classified, not the classified stuff. 

But if it’s true that he transmitted to his wife information about U.S. strategy, how to deal with the Iranian nuclear project or the embargo or how to deal with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu versus, or whoever the Israeli government was, then it is espionage and it reifies what the judge said. You put the security of the United States in danger.  

And that’s a lesson we should all remember. These people who hate Trump so much, because in their excess, they said and did things that were so extraordinary to show everybody how much they hated Trump, they had lost all reason. And when you look at these people on the scene, they’ve all destroyed their careers.  

Bolton, self-employed. He didn’t have to do that. He could have said, “Donald Trump and I disagree. I’m a more traditional activist, interventionist, and he has a different notion of deterrence. But I’m very honored because I have never received an appointment because the Democratic Senate refused to confirm me in any nomination, and the only chance I’ve had to serve in high-appointed government office was during the George W. Bush administration because of a recess appointment for a year that did not require Senate confirmation. Donald Trump put me as national security adviser for the express reason that you did not have to be confirmed for that appointment. And I owe him everything, but we disagree, and I’m gonna bow out.” 

That’s all he had to do, but he couldn’t. Same thing with Bill Kristol, Max Boot, all of ’em. All they had to say was, “I had a lifelong life of conservative value. Kinda like Brett Stevens, whom I don’t agree with, but that’s what he pretty much did. And then at some point he said, “This is going nowhere. He’s better than the alternative.”

But they can’t do that. They had all these people, these clips attacking Trump this week. And I said to myself, “There’s [Stephen] Colbert. He’s destroyed his career. He is going to go off the air. There’s [Jimmy] Kimmel. He’s saying stuff about Trump, he’s going to go off the air. He destroyed his career.” He says he is going to last, but his viewers have gone down below the little blimp he got. There’s what was her name? [Kathy Griffin] or something that held the [Trump] head? She’s back. I said, “He destroyed your career.” They had Rosie O’Donnell. You are in Ireland. You’re destroyed. 

Almost every one of these people, celebrities, politicians, that went after Trump and said that he was Satan incarnate. And look at all the Senate. Remember [Ben] Sasse and the guy from Tennessee, Bob Corker? All of ’em. Paul Ryan. All of ’em. Mitt Romney. They just couldn’t express a disagreement in a polite way and say, “We differ, but we’ll try to work with [Trump].” And instead, they imploded. All of them. 

Fowler: Well, I think hubris was the guiding motivation.  

Hanson: Hubris. What they say is, “Hubris brings Ate or self-destruction, which leads to Nemesis or divine retribution.”  

Fowler: Yeah, karma. Here we go. Karma.  

Hanson: Karma. What comes around goes around. 

Fowler: Yeah. 

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