Full excerpt from my forthcoming book “Speaking for Myself,” about John Bolton, a man drunk on power who ultimately betrayed America when he didn’t get his way... “That evening the United States hosted the reciprocal dinner at the Winfield House, the US Ambassador’s residence...
Earlier in the trip, the Winfield House had been the site of a nasty fight between senior White House officials. To prepare for every foreign trip we had daily operations meetings and briefings leading up to the trip itself...
The UK state visit had lots of moving parts and one area of concern was that there would not be a presidential motorcade to and from most events, because the president would predominantly be traveling on Marine One. The UK security team was allowing one small staff motorcade...
and based on their protocol they’d designated it for National Security Advisor John Bolton. In one of the prep briefings Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Walsh asked Bolton’s team to be sure to wait on the senior White House staff vehicles traveling to the Winfield House...
so they could be part of Bolton’s motorcade and not get stuck in traffic. Bolton’s team acknowledged the request. As he did on many of our foreign trips, Bolton had a separate agenda and often arrived and departed on a different plane because he didn’t want to travel...
on Air Force One with the President and his team. Bolton apparently felt too important to travel with the rest of us. It was a running joke in the White House. As we were ready to depart for the Winfield House we loaded onto a small black bus...
On board were Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor Dan Scavino, Walsh and me. Based on US protocol, Mnuchin, Mulvaney and Walsh all outranked Bolton...
Mnuchin, one of the highest ranking officials in government, far outranked him. We waited at the hotel but there was no sign of Bolton or his motorcade. After a while we gave up and headed to the Winfield House to meet the president...
While en route, UK police directed us to pull to the side of the road because someone was coming through...we looked over to see who it was and sure enough here came Bolton and his motorcade. We waited and watched as Bolton sped by and left us in the dust...
The discussion on the bus quickly moved from casual chit chat to how arrogant and selfish Bolton could be, not just in this moment but on a regular basis. If anyone on the team should have merited a motorcade it was Mnuchin, but he was a team player...
Bolton was a classic case of a senior White House official drunk on power, who had forgotten that nobody elected him to anything. Often Bolton acted like he was the president, pushing an agenda contrary to President Trump’s...
When we finally arrived at the Winfield House, Mick Mulvaney, typically laid-back and not one to get caught up in titles or seniority, confronted Bolton and unleashed a full Irish explosion on him. He lit into him in a way I hadn’t seen him do to anyone before...
Mick made clear he was the chief of staff and Bolton’s total disregard for his colleagues and common decency was unacceptable and would no longer be tolerated. “Let’s face it John,” Mick said. “You’re a f—— self-righteous, self-centered son of a b——!”
That epithet really didn’t have much to do with the motorcade, but was the culmination of months of Bolton thinking he was more important and could play by a different set of rules than the rest of the team. Bolton backed down and stormed off...
The rest of us looked on and nodded in approval, proud of Mick for standing up for us. Mick even got a few high fives from officials thrilled someone had put Bolton in his place.”
