A former top national security adviser to President Trump told Republicans in the House impeachment inquiry Thursday morning to stop advancing a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections rather than Russia.
WASHINGTON — A former top national security adviser to President Trump told Republicans in the House impeachment inquiry Thursday morning to stop advancing a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections rather than Russia///CRIMSON TAZVINZWA/
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” said Fiona Hill, who until July was the deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council.
“The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified,” Hill continued.
Hill, who testified alongside State Department counselor David Holmes, told the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians have succeeded in what they set out to do in 2016, and are going to do it again in the 2020 election.
“Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined,” Hill said. “President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super-PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each other, degrade our institutions and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.”
Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton Resigns; According To Him But Trump Disagrees
By Jon Allsop
TV helped get John Bolton hired as Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Trump reportedly liked watching Bolton on Fox News, where he was a contributor; when Bolton was appointed, in March last year, he was the third TV personality in eight days to formally enter the president’s team. It’s fitting, then, that TV helped get Bolton “fired,” too. (Bolton says he wasn’t fired; more on that shortly.) A TV star, Tucker Carlson, contributed to Trump’s recent turn against Bolton; Carlson privately advised Trump to ditch him, having also slammed him on air. And Trump reportedly grew tired of Bolton’s failure to parrot his foreign-policy line. Advisers convinced the president that Bolton was a leaker (Bolton denies this) adept at spinning his own perspective into the press; in recent days, for example, Trump was unhappy that his decision to nix a deal with the Taliban was portrayed by the media as a victory for Bolton. According to CNN, Bolton even started refusing TV hits where he would have to defend controversial Trump stances, such as readmitting Russia to the G7. His departure seemed inevitable; yesterday it was confirmed. James Poniewozik, who just wrote a book about Trump’s relationship with TV, tweeted that officials such as Bolton “live by the tube, die by (the reluctance to go on) the tube.”
If Bolton was going to “die by the tube,” he was clearly determined to do so on his own terms. Twelve minutes after Trump tweeted that he’d asked for Bolton’s resignation, Bolton tweeted a rebuttal, insisting that he offered his resignation unprompted, and suggesting that Trump initially demurred. Shortly afterward, Bolton texted into Fox News. Brian Kilmeade read his message—“Let’s be clear, I resigned”—live on air. (“Why are we doing this?” Harris Faulkner, Kilmeade’s co-host, asked. “Like… I know why we’re doing this: it’s a talk show. Breaking news. But why are they doing it? Why are we seeing this play, one against the other almost, in terms of what the narrative is? Is it important?”) Bolton also texted his version of events to Robert Costa, of The Washington Post, and Peter Baker, of The New York Times. The Post and Rachel Maddow, among others, got to work figuring out whether Trump or Bolton should be believed. (The verdict? Bolton’s account, that he resigned, seems more credible.)
Whatever the immediate impetus, it’s been clear for a long time that Bolton was not a good match for Trump. (It should be noted that when the Post reported tensions last month, a National Security Council spokesperson accused it of anti-Bolton bias, adding “There’s more truth in the National Enquirer.”) The conventional narrative here—that Bolton the hawkish interventionist chafed against Trump the “America First” isolationist—is basically true, but is overly simplistic. (Trump has done hawkish things, such as striking Syria and Afghanistan; Bolton, for his part, has explicitly rejected the “neocon” tag the media attached to him, calling it “clearly not accurate.”) Fittingly for this TV presidency, the pair’s differences were at least as much about perception as they were about ideology; as BuzzFeed’s Hayes Brown and Miriam Elder wrote yesterday, Trump liked the strength Bolton projected on TV, but did not want to follow through on Bolton’s aggressive impulses. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of State, has had more luck staying in Trump’s good books because he’s “a Plasticine version of Bolton,” the pair wrote; Pompeo shares many of Bolton’s views, but has been willing to shut up about them out of fealty to the boss.
Last night, Ben Rhodes, an adviser in the Obama White House, tweeted that Bolton ultimately failed to upend Trump’s “Fox News foreign policy.” In particular, Carlson, who often backs Trump’s anti-interventionist impulses, proved a reliable scourge. In June, he reportedly was influential in persuading Trump to call off a planned strike on Iran that Bolton had advocated; the next day, Carlson called Bolton a “bureaucratic tapeworm” on his show. The same month, when Carlson accompanied Trump to Asia for his historic meeting (and blatant photo op) with Kim Jong Un, Bolton was nowhere to be seen, having been dispatched to Mongolia instead. Last night, Carlson reveled in Bolton’s departure, calling him “a man of the left.” (Carlson, obviously, was wrong, but his point that Bolton believes in the “force of government” was not totally off.)
Trump might look to Fox for Bolton’s replacement: Douglas Macgregor, a retired Army colonel and frequent Carlson guest, is reportedly one name under consideration. (As the revolving door spins, it remains to be seen whether Bolton will regain his contributor status at Fox.) As severaloutlets have pointed out, whoever Trump picks next, the president will effectively act as his own national security adviser. Just as surely, he’ll continue to take counsel from the people in his TV.
Below, more on John Bolton and Trump:
Having his say: Now that he’s out the White House door, will Bolton tell us how he really feels about Trump? Other figures ousted from the president’s foreign-policy orbit have kept their counsel—hawking a book recently, James Mattis, the former defense secretary, said it would be improper for him to be too candid—but Bolton told the Post last night, “I will have my say in due course.” The Atlantic’s David Frum argues that Bolton owes it to America to tell the truth about Trump.
All smiles: An hour before Trump tweeted Bolton’s departure, the White House press office announced that Bolton would appear at a press conference alongside Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, later in the day. (The announcement was cited as evidence for Bolton’s claim that he did actually resign.) At the presser, Pompeo and Mnuchin, both of whom have clashed with Bolton, grinned during questioning about his departure. An official close to Pompeo said Pompeo’s smile “spoke for itself.”
The state of play: According to a CNN poll out yesterday, six in 10 Americans say Trump does not deserve a second term; a Post/ABC poll out today shows the president trailing all his top 2020 rivals on the Democratic side. (Per the CNN poll, 71 percent of respondents trust little or nothing of the official information disseminated by the White House.) There’s better news for the president in North Carolina, where Republican Dan Bishop won a Congressional special election yesterday—but Bishop’s narrow victory in a deep-red district underscored the GOP’s problem with suburban voters, per the Times.
