Donald Trump claims he fired national security adviser John Bolton on Monday night, but Rachel Maddow exposed that to be another lie in an era full of falsehoods.
On her program on Tuesday night, Maddow said the president’s claim that he canned Bolton is a provable lie.
“The White House was still having Bolton chair meetings at the White House and they were still announcing his forthcoming briefings to the press today,” the MSNBC host pointed out. “The president says he was fired last night.”
Maddow added, “We just assume at this point that anything the president says, even about his own behavior, has to be rounded up to the nearest fact.”
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Video:
Rachel Maddow catches Trump in another lie, this time regarding the “firing” of John Bolton. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/YmnZClIdcK
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) September 11, 2019
Maddow said:
As of today, he’s fired another one. And this relationship ended as raggedly and chaotically as all the rest of them. National security adviser John Bolton reportedly sharing a principals meeting at the White House as recently as this morning. The White House press office putting out a statement at 10:56 a.m. today announcing that John Bolton would be briefing the press from the White House briefing room today at 1:30 p.m. John Bolton, however, did not make it until 1:30 p.m. because 1 hour and 2 minutes after this press release from the press secretary about his forthcoming briefing, the president tweeted that John Bolton had been fired and, in fact, he had been fired last night. Which makes no sense, right? The White House was still having Bolton chair meetings at the White House and they were still announcing his forthcoming briefings to the press today. The president says he was fired last night. And, you know, at this point, that isn’t even, like, the story here. We just assume at this point that anything the president says, even about his own behavior, has to be rounded up to the nearest fact. So nobody much minds that he has clearly told a false story today about the firing of John Bolton, something that plainly cannot be true. We just let that go.
Trump’s White House is full of high school drama
All of this drama would make for a good teenage soap opera if it wasn’t for the fact that this is American foreign policy we’re talking about, not an episode of Riverdale.
Of course, Trump has never cared about sound policymaking for two reasons: 1. Because he has no interest in/grasp of policy; and 2. To him, it doesn’t make for good television.
At the end of the day, there is almost no one who disagrees that John Bolton is one of the most dangerous foreign policy thinkers of our time. But the way he left is just another example of the chaos swirling around Donald Trump’s national security team.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
