John Bolton Blames Trump Administration for Making North Korea “More Dangerous Now”

Speaking to CNBC, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton blamed the Trump administration for souring relations between the United States and North Korea,

“The fact is that we wasted a lot of time with Trump’s failed diplomacy with North Korea,” Bolton said. “Rogue states need time to perfect their nuclear capabilities, their ballistic missile capabilities. That’s what Kim Jong Un was doing. So, I do think it’s more dangerous now because of the progress that North Korea has made.”

Bolton’s comments follow remarks he made last year that the idea “that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true,” adding: “We’re now nearly three years into the administration with no visible progress toward getting North Korea to make the strategic decision to stop pursuing deliverable nuclear weapons.”

Bolton also said that Trump has no “philosophy” or “grand strategy.”

“He is not a conservative, he is not a liberal either in American terms, he is Donald Trump and his focus is Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s re-election,” Bolton said. “I just don’t think that he ever fully understood the gravity of his responsibility as president, the weight of the decisions he had, and it is why I worry about the harm that he did to the U.S. in his first term and why that harm could be even more profound in a second term.”