Book Talking Points 1/3
Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for help in getting reelected
Bolton described a conversation between the two world leaders at the June 2019 G-20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, where Trump told Xi that Midwestern farmers were key to his reelection in November 2020. Trump urged Xi to
buoy his political fortunes by buying American agricultural products, linking a promise to waive some tariffs on China in exchange. Trump "stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," Bolton wrote.
Bolton also says that it's hard for him to think of a single decision Trump made during his stint at the White House "that wasn't driven by reelection calculations."
Trump had no problem with China's concentration camps
Bolton describes several instances where Trump waffles on China-related issues after conversations with Xi, notably on the mass concentration camps Beijing was
using to imprison and "re-educate" Uyghur Muslims. Bolton writes that according to the US interpreter in the room during a conversation between Xi and Trump at the G-20 meeting in June 2019, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was "exactly the right thing to do."
Bolton adds that Trump didn't want to sanction China for their crackdown on the Muslim minority because of ongoing trade negotiations. "Religious repression in China was also not on Trump's agenda; whether it was the Catholic Church or Falun Gong, it didn't register," Bolton writes.
Pompeo, famously loyal to the President, may have trash-talked him
Bolton describes a meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un in which the North Korean despot blamed troubled relations between his country and the US on the actions of prior administrations. Emphasizing the meetings he and Trump had held, Kim told the President that they could dispel mistrust and work quickly toward a nuclear agreement. After Trump told Kim that he would seek Senate ratification of any agreement with North Korea, Bolton writes that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo passed him a notepad. On it was scribbled the message, "he is so full of shit."
"I agreed," Bolton writes, going on to note that Kim promised no further nuclear tests. The State Department has not responded to CNN's request for comment about Pompeo's alleged note.
Trump offered to help Turkey's leader avoid a Justice Department probe
Bolton writes that in December 2018, Trump offered to help Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a Justice Department investigation into a Turkish bank with ties to Erdogan that was suspected of violating US Iran sanctions. When the Turkish leader presented Trump with a memo from the law firm representing Halkbank, Trump flipped through it and then declared he believed the bank was totally innocent of violating US sanctions related to Iran.
Trump told Erdogan he would "take care of things," and explained that the Southern District prosecutors "were not his people, but were Obama people," and the problem would be fixed when they were replaced by his people.
Bolton notes that "this was all nonsense" because the Justice Department prosecutors were career employees who would have taken the same path with the Halkbank probe regardless of who was president.