"Bolton is extremely famous for his fervent hawkery, including on the Iraq war. If Trump bothered to do a cursory Google search on Bolton before appointing him..."

"... to the most powerful national security position in his administration, he’d have turned up headlines like 'John Bolton: No regrets about toppling Saddam.' Sadly, there was too much good stuff [on] television in the days leading up to Bolton’s nomination to do that search. Trump does not seem to realize how bad it makes him sound that he never bothered to ask what he later identified as the key question about the worldview of his own national security adviser."

From "Trump: I Didn’t Realize Bolton Supported Iraq War Until After I Hired Him" by Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine). Chait is reading the WSJ interview in which Trump says:

He had a lot of policy disputes, he and I. And after the first month or so, you know, I asked him one question. I said, “So, do you think you did the right thing by going into Iraq?” He said, “Yes.” And that’s when I lost him. And that was early on. That’s when I lost him. But no, I disagreed with much of the stuff he said. He was one of many people. I liked listening to many people, and then doing whatever is the right thing to do.

You didn’t ask him about Iraq before you brought him into the White House? If he regretted that?

No, but it didn’t … I knew all about his policy on Iraq. But that didn’t matter, frankly. Because he made a terrible mistake. And so did everybody else involved in Iraq and the Middle East, frankly. I never thought it was the right thing to do. And I’ve been proven right. But when he told me he still thinks it was the right thing to do, and was unable to explain it to me, I said, “Explain that to me, because I don’t think you can.’ And he could not explain it to me. So I said, “Do you say that just to make yourself feel good? Or do you say that because you really believe it?” He said, “I really believe it.” I said, “Well, then you’ve lost me because it’s just wrong.”...

[W]hen I asked him the question, so John, you were one of the people that were really pushing hard to go into the Middle East, to go into Iraq. Would you do it again? He said, Yes. And that’s where I said this guy is crazy.... I was talking to him. I said, So was that a mistake? I said, and it’s okay to admit you made a mistake, although that’s a big one. That’s a beauty. And I said, Do you think it was a mistake? And he said, No, I think it was the right thing to do. And I said, You know, you can’t explain that. You just can’t explain it.

Why didn't Trump ask Bolton before he was hired whether in retrospect he still thinks it was the right decision to go into Iraq?  Chait's answer is that that Trump is impulsive and reckless: He just didn't "bother." A more charitable reading of Trump — and I'm not saying the President deserves charity, just trying to balance things a little — is that he'd formed the opinion that everyone knows now that the Iraq War was a mistake. Trump was and is very proud of his opposition to the Iraq War, his astute perception from the beginning that it was a mistake. But he lacked the astute perception to see that there were still some people who believed the war was a good idea and to notice he was hiring one of those people.

You know this morning when I saw this tweet of Trump's...

Bolton’s book, which is getting terrible reviews, is a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad. Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

... I was going to snark You knew he was a snake.... you know Trump and that song lyric he's recited many times about the woman who takes in and nurtures a snake that ultimately bites and kills her?

“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in

But I guess Trump didn't know Bolton was a snake.

John Bolton's book "has been written with so little discernible attention to style and narrative form that he apparently presumes an audience that is hanging on his every word."

According to the review in the NYT, written by Jennifer Szalai.

... Bolton has filled this book’s nearly 500 pages with minute and often extraneous details, including the time and length of routine meetings and even, at one point, a nap. Underneath it all courses a festering obsession with his enemies, both abroad (Iran, North Korea) and at home (the media, “the High-Minded,” the former defense secretary Jim Mattis). The book is bloated with self-importance, even though what it mostly recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much. It toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged....

In another book by another writer, such anecdotes might land with a stunning force, but Bolton fails to present them that way, leaving them to swim in a stew of superfluous detail. Besides, the moment he cites as the real “turning point” for him in the administration had to do with an attack on Iran that, to Bolton’s abject disappointment, didn’t happen....

... Trump decided to call off the strikes at the very last minute, after learning they would kill as many as 150 people. “Too many body bags,” Trump told him. “Not proportionate.” Bolton still seems incensed at this unexpected display of caution and humanity on the part of Trump, deeming it “the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any President do.”...

[H]is chapter on Ukraine is weird, circuitous and generally confounding. It’s full of his usual small-bore detail, but on the bigger, more pointed questions, the sentences get windy and conspicuously opaque.... ... Bolton — known for what a 2019 profile in The New Yorker called his “tremendous powers of recall” — said it was too much for him to fully understand....

It’s a strange experience reading a book that begins with repeated salvos about “the intellectually lazy” by an author who refuses to think through anything very hard himself.

How shocking is "And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter"?

Trump used that phrase yesterday at the Roundtable on Justice Disparities in America (transcript). Context:

In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell. And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It’s just everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene. But to me, it was after you watched policemen running out of a police precinct. And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything.... I said, “I’m sorry. We have to have [the National Guard] go in.” And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter, right through, boom. I’ll never forget. You saw the scene on that road wherever it may be in the city, Minneapolis. They were lined up. Boom. They just walked straight. And yes, there was some tear gas and probably some other things and the crowd dispersed. And they went through it by the end of that evening. And it was a short evening. Everything was fine.... So I just want to tell you that we’re working on a lot of different elements having to do with law, order, safety, comfort, control, but we want safety. We want compassion. We want everything.

As I drove home from my sunrise run this morning...



... I had "Morning Joe" on the satellite radio, and he was riffing emotively on that phrase "it was like a knife cutting butter." Joe acted as though the phrase connoted murderously cutting into human flesh, and Who talks like that?!! In Joe's vivid nightmare, Trump is unfathomably evil. Joe said it's as if Trump were "running for President of the Confederacy" and Trump has decided to speak only to "angry white men — angry old white men."

Joe is 57, by the way, so that's a bit old, and he is also white and angry, so maybe he knows whereof he speaks, and yet he does not mean that he hears the siren call of Donald Trump.

But let's look at this phrase "like a knife cutting butter." It's an idiomatic expression! It means it was easy. You see the context. It doesn't mean the National Guard was sadistically injuring people. It means all they had to do was show up and walk straight in and everything worked out just fine.

It wasn't even a hot knife....



The inability to understand metaphor is, of course, highly selective. A commentator like Joe has to use what Trump gives him. He must scan the transcripts every day, looking for something to pretend to be anguished about.

"On the new rebel state’s first night, the atmosphere was festive and triumphant. Hooded men spray-painted the police station with slogans and anarchist symbols..."

"... renaming it the 'Seattle People’s Department East Precinct.' Raz Simone, a local rapper with an AK-47 slung from his shoulder and a pistol attached to his hip, screamed, 'This is war!' into a white-and-red megaphone and instructed armed paramilitaries to guard the barricades in shifts. Later in the night, Simone was filmed allegedly assaulting multiple protestors who disobeyed his orders, informing them that he was the 'police' now, sparking fears that he was becoming the de facto warlord of the autonomous zone. A homeless man with a baseball bat wandered along the borderline and two unofficial medics in medieval-style chain mail stood ready for action."

From "Anarchy in Seattle/Antifa-affiliated activists seize control of a city neighborhood and declare an 'autonomous zone'" by Christopher F. Rufo (City Journal).

At least it's an example: Don't do this in your city. (Can I trust this not to happen in my city?)

ADDED: Here's the NYT article on the subject "Free Food, Free Speech and Free of Police: Inside Seattle’s ‘Autonomous Zone’/President Trump challenged Seattle’s mayor to 'take back your city' after police vacated a precinct and protesters laid claim to the neighborhood around it":

[F]acing a growing backlash over its dispersal tactics in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the Seattle Police Department this week offered a concession: Officers would abandon their precinct, board up the windows and let the protesters have free rein outside.

In a neighborhood that is the heart of the city’s art and culture — threatened these days as rising tech wealth brings in gentrification — protesters seized the moment. They reversed the barricades to shield the liberated streets and laid claim to several city blocks, now known as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.”

“This space is now property of the Seattle people,” read a banner on the front entrance of the now-empty police station. The entire area was now a homeland for racial justice — and, depending on the protester one talked to, perhaps something more....

“Take back your city NOW,” Mr. Trump wrote in a tweet directed at Mayor Jenny Durkan and Gov. Jay Inslee. “If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game.”....

The protest zone has increasingly functioned with the tacit blessing of the city. Harold Scoggins, the fire chief, was there on Wednesday, chatting with protesters, helping set up a call with the police department and making sure the area had portable toilets and sanitation services. “I have no idea where we’re headed,” Mr. Scoggins said in an interview. “We’ve been working step by step on how to build a relationship, build trust in small things, so we can figure this out together.”...

AND: Ken Jennings (who lives in Seattle) weighs in:

A play in three acts from this afternoon, since Trump is now tweeting about Seattle. A local TV host credulously reports an unusual SPD claim, doubles down when readers are skeptical, and then... finds it’s not true. pic.twitter.com/5ce8O0wFea

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) June 11, 2020

"The New York Times announced Sunday that Editorial Page Editor James Bennet is resigning — amid reports of anger inside the company over the publication of an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton..."

"... about the George Floyd unrest last week. Bennet, the brother of 2020 White House candidate Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., had apologized late last week after previously defending the piece, titled, 'Send in the Troops.' Cotton, R-Ark., called for the government to deploy troops as a last resort to help quell riots and looting that emerged amid the anger over Floyd's death in Minneapolis police custody last month. The publication sparked a revolt among Times journalists, with some saying it endangered black employees. Some staff members called out sick Thursday in protest, and the Times later announced that a review found the piece did not meet its standards.... 'Last week we saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we've experienced in recent years,' [Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote]. 'James and I agreed that it would take a new team to lead the department through a period of considerable change.'"

Fox News reports.

ADDED: NYT writer Bari Weiss has some very useful commentary at Twitter:

The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes [and] the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same.  The Old Guard lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism. They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption. The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it "safetyism," in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.

It's interesting that people who made safety so overwhelmingly important would accept rioting and vehemently oppose government's protecting citizens from the forces of chaos.