Social media was abuzz after the longtime Republican official’s exchange Tuesday with CNN host Jake Tapper.
White House National Security Advisor John Bolton speaks to reporters on events occurring in Venezuela, April 30, 2019, outside the West Wing. (White House, Tia Dufour)
By Common Dreams Staff
Longtime Republican official John Bolton admitted during a televised interview Tuesday that he has helped plan coups outside of the United States.
Bolton, who served as former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, appeared on CNN to discuss the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
After Bolton claimed that Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election that provoked last year’s Capitol attack were not part of “a carefully planned coup d’état aimed at the Constitution,” host Jake Tapper said that “I don’t know that I agree with you, to be fair, with all due respect. One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”
Bolton responded that “I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coups d’état, not here, but, you know, other places, it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he did.”
Jake Tapper follows up on John Bolton's past coup planning.
Bolton: "I’m not going to get into the specifics, but–"
Tapper: "Successful coups?"
Bolton brings up the failed Venezuelan coup, prompting Tapper to add: "I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me." pic.twitter.com/bJAa07h8Ow
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 12, 2022
Tapper followed up on coup comments and Bolton — who also held roles in the administrations of former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — initially said that “I’m not gonna get into the specifics.”
Bolton then pointed out that in his recently released book, he wrote about the failed effort to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2019. The Trump administration notably backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó.
[RELATED: “The Pathology of John Bolton”]
However, as reporters and others — such as Rep. Ilhan Omar —were quick to highlight, Bolton has a long history of supporting such efforts.
As HuffPost detailed Tuesday:
“In 2004, while Bolton was serving in the State Department, the U.S. faced allegations of backing the overthrow of Haiti’s president. A former French ambassador told The New York Times this year that the U.S. and France had ‘effectively orchestrated’ the coup.
Bolton has a long history of advocating for coups and supporting regime change plots. He advocated for regime change in Iraq ahead of a war he helped orchestrate and said in 2018 that the United States should overthrow the government of Iran.”
Critics of Bolton shared a range of reactions on social media.
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch tweeted that “I’ve been investigating U.S. imperialism for decades, and…he…just…blurted…it…out.”
QUIET PART OUT LOUD ALERT?? https://t.co/eBm8cn8tfT
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) July 12, 2022
“America in one clip,” More Perfect Union‘s Jordan Zakarin said of the interview, describing Bolton as “a bloodthirsty right-wing war hawk” who was given a platform to “brazenly admit to secret war crimes without worrying about any consequences whatsoever.”
“It’s just a little oopsies, a meme for a few days,” Zakarin added, declaring that “this is even more embarrassing for CNN.”
Among the numerous other reactions:
I hope my American followers can understand how extreme and abnormal this is. I don't know any other country where a former official can just openly say this, and then the *journalist* interviewing him simply nods along as if it's completely unremarkable. https://t.co/FFJkxGYtCJ
— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) July 12, 2022
This is up there with Mike Pompeo saying of the CIA, "We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses." https://t.co/rOeSAve5F8
— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) July 12, 2022
This article is from Common Dreams.
..and predictably the corpirate Empire friendly White Western Minority media have completely ignored this.
One of the benefits of a Regime Change occurring in the United States would be the ability to hold people like Bolton and Eliot Abrams accountable.
They done US regime change in ’63.
Excrement always floats to the top, eh?
It’s not even a Freudian slip of the tongue. It’s what people in the Blob openly talk about among themselves. To them, it’s so common place that they forget where they can say it and where they can’t. Sometimes they forget which lies they have told the public.
The lies are becoming more transparent than the emperor’s new clothes. The words lose their meaning. In addition to a military defeat in Ukraine, the West faces an economic crisis from which it may never recuperate and a moral crisis that will precipitate us into chaos.
“Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.” ? Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections or Sentences and Moral Maxims
At some point, the vice cannot be bothered to try some hollow tributes, but at this point, there is lack of coordination. Flacks and “realists” ponder of the West does enough to promote liberal values or too much, i.e. they occupy slightly different shades of hypocrisy, while Bolton and his ilk care about liberal values only in the sense that they hate them.
No wonder these guys want Julian Assange’s head delivered on a silver platter.
as usual in the search for idiot scapegoat employees of a corrupt debased system, this brilliant foreign policy worker who makes farm field hands seem doctoral candidates is made to look like a singular villain..as though the schmuck gets up every morning and says “despite the incredibly high ideals and sacred democratic and socially just policies of my wonderful system, i’m going to screw it all by myself and thereby absolve all the helpless millions of any responsibility at all in succumbing to the rule of billionaire minorities…of course he did it all by himself!!!
Sadly, this is not really news. The whole world has known this for a long, long time.
What’s infuriating is the monumental hypocrisy of our nation’s elected officials who scream bloody murder if anyone else interferes with out elections.
It’s news that a former government official has so openly stated it.
What’s infuriating to me is that nobody does anything about it! I think it is because the mainstream media fails to make a fuss about it, so those in power don’t feel pressured to change their behaviour. So it continues.
The mainstream media is complicit because of its total failure to hold governments to account.
On that.
“Bolton responded that “I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coups d’état, not here, but, you know, other places, it takes a lot of work.””
“Mike Pompeo saying of the CIA, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.””
President Trump: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
You know, it’s kind of nice and refreshing for the republicans to be so honest about these things …
As opposed to the Dems, who still refuse to admit what their own government and its many agencies do both inside the USA and around the world. If Clinton had won in 2016, it is entirely possible that she would have authorised a military assault, possibly an invasion, of Iran.
Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report put it very well when he said that Obama (and by extension the Dem leadership group) are not the lesser evil, but rather the “more effective evil.”
“Bolton responded that “I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coups d’état, not here, but, you know, other places, it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he did.””
Never thought I’d say this, but kudos to Bolton, I guess. I mean, I guess it’s just because we’ve gotten to a point where every powerful person knows that no matter what they do, how many people they kill, how many underage girls (or boys) they rape, how much havoc they wreak, they will never be held accountable. But still, the honesty is refreshing – at least we’re no longer pretending to be the good guys.
And he’s right about Trump too. A couple hundred middle age to elderly people (some so frail the exertion gave them strokes/heart attacks) mobbing the Capitol with little coordination and no support from the military does not constitute a coup attempt. And Bolton is one who would know.
The “Brooks Brothers Riot” in Florida 2000 was part of a successful coup. It led to the Supreme Court’s decision to stop the vote count and resulted in the installation of Bush (contrary to the actual vote count). That’s a coup.
You don’t need color revolutions, street violence, and military backup to accomplish a coup.
The Trump coup plans were based on the legal strategy in the Eastman memo – it almost worked, and since then, Republicans have pursued that Strategy in the States and the Supreme Court has agreed to here a case about the “independent State Legislature” theory which will enable and legitimize it. The Capitol riot was a way to delay certification of the electoral college sufficiently for the Supreme Court to respond to a petition that was filed and in the hands of Alito and another Judge (Kavanaugh?)
Brilliant. Thanks for this info. Wish CN would follow it up. Also, it now seems as if we have the right interview technique to get these blood thirsty war mongers to tell the truth. Pretend you know more than they do! Because unlike spooks, these advisors can’t stand to let anybody know more than they do and will blurt out the truth just be the smartest guy in the room. Wish CNN would have followed up on test.
The “Brooks Brothers Riot” had the backing of establishment power, which Trump has never had.
Funny, the previous comment to yours triggered my personal takeaway from the Bush v Gore ruling: that it’s unabashedly in the open, we don’t elect our leaders. They are chosen by someone(s) else.
My anger at the time matured into a gratitude that it’s out in the open.
I also appreciate this website for introducing me To Smedley Butler’s tome, 20 years ago. There’s nothing ‘late 20th century’ about the sheer hypocrisy, greed and arrogance of our ruling class. Same old story
The is no need to republish this psychopath’s photo at the white house — he’s done enough to destroy integrity in DC and throughout the land.
And we need not listen to his forked-tongue perfidy about twice-indicted expotus45.
War criminal indeed.