- [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication, ellergroup.com, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and Karey and Chris Oddo.

- I'm Evan Smith.

He's a former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and a former US National Security Advisor.

He's John Bolton, this is "Overheard."

A platform and a voice is a powerful thing.

You really turn the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

Are we blowing this?

Are we doing the thing we shouldn't be doing by giving in to the attention junkie?

As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everyone else.

- Two.

- This is "Overheard."

(audience applauding) (light uplifting music) Ambassador Bolton, welcome.

Thank you very much for being here.

- Glad to be with you.

- Good to see you, sir.

So, up top, I want to talk about briefly the indictment against you.

Federal indictment on charges of mishandling classified information, eight charges of transmission, or counts of transmission, 10 counts of retention of national defense information.

This indictment was on October 16th.

You immediately entered a plea of not guilty, and paraphrasing, you said, "This is the latest effort by a weaponized justice department to target people he," meaning the president, "deems his enemies."

That's right?

- That's roughly what I said, right.

- Yeah, I'd love to talk to you about this.

- So would I.

- Yeah.

(audience and Evan laughing) But it's a pending legal matter.

- Right, it's just not appropriate now, not prudent for me.

We'll have our say in due course and maybe I'll come back and we can talk about it further.

- Okay, I'm first on your list, okay?

Very good.

(audience applauding) Can't talk about it, can talk about him.

- Absolutely.

- "Absolutely," okay, roll up your sleeves.

Let's talk about him.

(audience laughing) I want you to, using the lens of your expertise in foreign affairs, international relations, national security, safety of the homeland, all that, tell us how he's doing, how we're doing over the last 10 months.

- Well, I don't think he's fit to be president.

And I think his behavior- (audience applauding) His behavior in the first term and the first 10 months of his second term demonstrate that in many ways.

This is hard for people to get, it was hard for me to get, but Donald Trump does not have a philosophy.

He doesn't do grand strategy when it comes to national security- - So the idea that there's a Trump doctrine is giving him too much credit.

- Exactly, he's not up to it intellectually, and it's just not the way he's behaved.

He doesn't even do policy the way we normally understand that term in Washington.

He's been described as transactional, ad hoc, episodic.

He has a short attention span, and he can change during the course of a day where he is on any given point.

It's all driven by the question, what benefits Donald Trump?

- Right.

- This is something that Charles Krauthammer, now deceased, but a very astute commentator of American life, once said to me, and I think to others.

He said, "You know, I really misjudged Trump.

I once thought he was an 11-year-old.

But I realized I was 10 years off.

He's a one-year-old, (audience laughing) and he sees everything through the prism of, 'What benefits me?'"

- Right, you have an opinion piece in "The Washington Post" today about Venezuela and the bombing of these drug boats, we'll come back to this, in which you said, "He doesn't have a coherent strategy," again, paraphrasing.

"Everything about the way he approaches this is personal aggrandizement."

- Right.

- It's all about him.

- Right, and that's very dangerous when it comes to national security.

What a president should think of is, "What are the interests of the United States and its friends and allies?"

- Yep.

- "What are the threats to those threats and threats to the interest and how can I protect them?"

What Trump thinks about is, "How am I gonna get the Nobel Peace Prize?

How am I gonna get the Washington DC football stadium named after me?"

This is what he contemplates on a daily basis.

- Right, yeah, and this, we were talking about this backstage, the communicating foreign policy goals or strategies out in the open, often on Truth Social, on social media.

He's giving away the game, right?

To the people who we work with and who we work against.

- Yeah, I don't think he appreciates the next move.

I mean, his supporters often say, "This is a game of complicated three-dimensional chess."

- [Evan] "Three-dimensional chess," right.

- No, it's not, it's one move at a time right in front of his face.

That's what he sees, that's what he acts on.

- Right.

- And he doesn't think about the implications, doesn't care about them.

- [Evan] Yeah.

- Doesn't see that his behavior can have negative impacts that he's not even thinking about.

- I wanna do a world tour in a second.

I want to go place by place where we have strategic interests and where we have been involved in matters that affect us, but I want to ask you about his people first.

And I'll kind of go one at a time, Pete Hegseth.

- Well, I don't think he's competent to be Secretary of Defense.

I don't think he understands the job, and I think this is really a grave problem given the number of national security threats we face around the world.

- Secretary Rubio.

- Well, I think he's a bright spot in the administration, and I just wish he behaved more like the Senator Rubio he was for so many years and spoke up in internal debates inside the administration, that can be hazardous to your political health.

But I think Rubio's heart is in the right place on most issues.

- Is this, just staying with Rubio for one second in this problem, this is a symptom within this administration, right?

This is what we're seeing kind of across the board.

You have to bend your own arc toward the principle, right?

- Well, look, the president- - This is the opposite of team of rivals, right.

- Yeah, well, but this is the president makes the final decisions, that's what he got elected for.

- [Evan] Right.

- The question is, is he making the most well-informed and effective decisions, or are people simply responding to his whims, his neuron flashes- - Right.

- That are really what drive his decisions?

And I think one lesson he took away from the first term is he doesn't want people around him who say, "Well, Mr.

President, have you thought of A and B and C facts?

Have you considered X, Y, and Z alternatives?

Have you weighed the costs and benefits?"

He wanted, and now effectively has, a cadre of yes men and yes women who simply say, "Yes, sir," when he says- - "Great idea."

- "This is what I wanna do."

- Right, Tulsi Gabbard.

- Utterly incompetent.

(audience laughing) - That's it?

- Well, I could- - That's the tweet, that's it.

- I could go beyond, but that probably provokes lawsuits.

- Sums up, yeah.

- Right.

- Mike Waltz, who now has your old gig at the United Nations.

- Well, in his tenure in Congress, I thought he was largely correct on national security issues.

He obviously ran afoul of Trump.

He's been moved over to the UN.

I had that job, I went in the other direction from being UN ambassador to being National Security Advisor.

But I don't know how much he's part of the action now that he's up in New York.

But again, when he was in the House of Representatives, I thought he was largely on point on national security.

- Right, but again, to your earlier point, anybody with an independent thought about this, that's not prioritized or welcomed necessarily within the conversation going on right now.

- No, and what this does is it leaves the president not as well informed as he could be, not as cognizant of potential alternatives or potential consequences to what he's doing.

This is not a question of saying we're not gonna let the president make a particular decision.

Again, he got elected to the office.

None of the rest of us did.

The question is, does he know enough to make a good decision?

- Right.

- Or is he just popping off?

- Does he have the inputs he needs?

- Right.

- Right.

Okay, world tour, let's start with Ukraine and Russia.

They're both one kind of combine, but also you may wanna talk about Russia separately.

But is our approach in the last 10 months to that conflict and to these actors the right approach or the wrong approach?

- Well, I don't think we've had an approach in the last 10 months.

I think it's been one thing one day, and another thing another day.

Which is not to justify the Biden administration's policy, which for nearly three years failed to come up with a winning strategy for Ukraine.

Failed to deliver and coordinate allied delivery of assistance to Ukraine that could have achieved the objective that every NATO member says is their goal, which is the full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

- Yeah.

The Biden administration was concerned with Ukraine not losing, but not with Ukraine winning.

And that largely explains the gridlock that Trump inherited.

- Right, what about the relationship between this President Trump and Putin?

Like, there's been a lot of speculation about what's going on there, and that relationship has in turn caused people to question what we're in, not only this conflict but any number of other conversations with Russia, for.

Do you have any insight into their relationship?

- Yeah, I think Trump thinks Putin is his friend.

And because Trump sees everything through the prism of personal relations, he believes if he has a good relationship with Vladimir Putin, then state-to-state relationships- - Yep.

- Between the US and Russia are good.

That's a huge oversimplification.

And I can tell you Vladimir Putin doesn't think Trump is his friend.

He thinks he's somebody with his KGB training that he can manipulate.

And that's exactly what he does.

- Yeah.

Talk about Israel, the conflict over there.

Have we approached this the right way or the wrong way?

- Well, again, I don't think there's been a coherent approach to it.

I think that Trump understands the strong feeling in particularly the evangelical Christian community for Israel and his, many of his policy decisions, with which I agree, are favorable to Israel.

But that's not what really is motivating him.

He sees the political benefit to Donald Trump of doing that.

And when he thinks that there's some chance for him to enhance his political standing, he takes it.

But in terms of how he approaches the issue, he has never understood the Iranian threat.

He's never understood the strategic implications of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons or its support of multiple terrorist groups across the region, which are directed not just against Israel, but against potentially friendly Arab states in the region, and even more potentially against the United States.

- President has, as you know, taken credit for what was, for about a minute, a ceasefire over there.

Seems like that ceasefire is not holding or has not held.

Does he deserve credit for bringing the parties together?

- Well, I think he took advantage of circumstances.

This is much like at the beginning of his term, when he also got a hostage exchange forcing the Israelis- - Right.

- To accept a plan Biden had been trying to convince them to accept for about a year and a half.

- Right.

- So the hostage exchange took place, phase one, then phase two, which is everything else collapsed.

And I think we're seeing the same thing here.

It's a fact that the living hostages have all been returned and most of the remains of the deceased hostages.

But the idea that we're now gonna go on to actual resolution of the conflict is a distant possibility, not for the least of which reasons, because Hamas in the Gaza Strip has shown absolutely no indication it's prepared to disarm and demilitarize.

- Do you trust Netanyahu?

I mean, I sort of want to ask you the same question that I asked you about Putin.

Trump believes his relationship with Netanyahu is going to achieve the goal that he has or achieve the end that we want.

Do you believe Netanyahu can be our ally in making that problem less of a problem?

- Well, I think Netanyahu, uniquely among Israeli and American politicians for decades, has seen the principle threat to peace and security in the Middle East as being Iran.

- [Evan] Right.

- And not just Iran's nuclear program, although that's the particular threat we face, but the support for terrorism as well.

There will never be comprehensive peace and security in the Middle East until the regime in Tehran is overthrown and the people of Iran govern their own country.

That doesn't mean peace- - Yeah.

- Will break out everywhere, but it's a necessary but not a sufficient condition that the Islamic Revolution in Iran be replaced with a decent representative government.

- You know, there are people in this country who believe that Israel has not acted honorably in the midst of this conflict.

Now, of course, October 7th is October 7th.

But it's a complicated situation.

- Well- - And they blame Netanyahu for not being sort of the kind of leader who will treat his enemies the way that he should.

- Well, let me put it this way.

I wouldn't trust Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or the government of Iran as far as I could throw them.

- Any of them.

- No, I think inherently in terrorist regimes and terrorist groups, the concept of truth and honor as we understand it doesn't exist.

And I think it is a legitimate war aim for Israel to take the Hamas organization politically and militarily and destroy it.

Because until that cloud is lifted from the people of Gaza, they will never have a chance to decide what they wanna do for their future.

- What are we doing about China?

Is China a threat?

- China's manifestly a threat to us, and I don't think the Trump administration knows what it wants to do.

I think Trump's ultimate objective, because he thinks that he and Xi Jinping have a good relationship personally- - We're staying on the same theme here, right?

- We're back to this point.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Is what he really wants is the biggest trade deal in history.

He went after it in the first term.

He made various agreements with China that they did not comply with- - Yeah.

- And we're right back at it again.

In some sense, he understands that it's a strategic threat, but because he thinks everything is based on personal relations, he thinks if he and Xi can sit down together, they can resolve everything, which is simply not true.

That's just not the way- - Yeah.

- The Chinese Communist Party looks at the world.

- You said that there was the same goal in the first term.

I really ought to just pause for a second and ask you, is there a material difference between 1.0 and 2.0 as it relates to these kinds of issues?

First Trump administration to second.

- Well, because there's no Trump philosophy, it all depends on circumstances.

- Yeah.

- So the particular issues are different, but I do think he has succeeded in the second term, as I said before, in surrounding himself with yes men.

- That's the difference.

- So that the rapidity of change of the Trump position is now much more apparent.

A lot of the behavior you see in public in the second term, we saw in private in the first term.

But now it just totally uninhibited.

- So if you have Mattis or Pompeo in those jobs versus Hegseth and Rubio, one material difference is you had people who maybe approached their jobs differently, guided him and advised him differently than the people who do now.

- And others were more willing to stand up to him in Congress as well.

- Congress has not done what it needs to do to be the check on the executive that the framers imagined.

- I think that's right.

- Yeah.

- I think it's a problem for both parties.

The Republicans have not stood up to them the way that they should.

There are signs that's beginning to change.

The Democrats, you know, I must say, since the 2024 election in Washington, they might as well not come to work in the morning for all the effectiveness that they've had.

- [Evan] Yeah.

- So I don't know that that situation- - Much as you may think you're offending some Democrats by saying that, most Democrats would go, "You're right, actually."

- I think they would.

- Yeah.

- And I think a lot of Republicans, this is a misapprehension people have, I don't think Trump has remade the Republican party.

I think he's intimidated a lot of people in Congress.

So I would say the good news is they don't agree with Trump.

The bad news is they're afraid to say so.

- But of course, the existential question that people now looking ahead wonder is, would Trumpism survive Trump?

If Trump is not, in fact, on the ballot in '28, does the set of circumstances we're seeing now that are driving outcomes and creating some level of anxiety, does that persist if somebody who is not named Trump is president?

- Well, I think it's very hard.

Because Trump doesn't have a philosophy, he has no real legacy to pass on.

And the inconsistencies in what he does- - Right.

- Drive fractures in his own base, some of which you can see beginning to emerge.

I think the greater danger is his behavior, which is unacceptable in so many respects.

The corruption, the personal enrichment, the disregard of norms.

Even though they may not amount to laws- - [Evan] Right.

- Or constitutional prohibitions, the absolute personalization of every disagreement is corrosive to an effective civil society.

This is not the kind of character that the founding fathers thought their politicians and leaders should have.

And the question is, can we get back to something more like just ordinary back-and-forth of politics?

I believe we can- - Right.

- But it's gonna take people prepared to rise above the level we're at now.

- You've been at this a long time.

Are you surprised that the guardrails have not held?

- Well, I think some have not held, but others remain untested.

I think largely, the judiciary is gonna be where it's decided.

We'll see what happens in the midterm elections.

A lot of this, what the framers contemplated was political disagreements would keep things in check.

And with Trump, that hasn't worked.

- Right.

- I think that's why he's such an aberration in American politics.

- Let's go back on our world tour.

I mentioned earlier "The Washington Post" piece that you wrote today about Venezuela and the bombing of these drug boats.

You have no doubt that that activity orchestrated by the president at his direction is extralegal?

- Well, I think you could make an argument about how to deal with the drug boats that he hasn't made.

One of his problems, and it's true domestically as well as internationally, is he can't tell the difference between law enforcement and military action.

We, throughout our history, have tried to make that distinction.

- Yup.

- Before the revolution, we objected to the use of British troops to police Boston and other American cities.

If Trump were a real conservative and believed in federalism, he wouldn't be sending the National Guard into Portland, Oregon or Chicago.

Because a real conservative, a real federalist believes that problems should be solved at the level of government closest to the people- - Local control.

Local control.

- Then cities, and then the states.

- Right.

- Trump wants to be everywhere.

So he wants to enforce law and order in Chicago and Portland.

That's just fundamentally contrary to the separation of military from civilian affairs and from the proper conservative view of federalism.

- Right now, of course, the big objection to Portland and Chicago is that he's manufacturing a crisis- - That's a whole- - Where the crime rates in those cities are nothing like what he's claiming.

And so the pretext is the wrong pretext.

Your concern is at least in part really process, not substance.

- Well, it's a decision about what the right level of government is.

The pretext point is a serious one because Trump doesn't know the difference between truth and falsehood.

Some people say he lies all the time.

To lie, you have to know what the truth is and consciously say the opposite, (audience laughing) and he can't tell.

He just says whatever he wants to have happen, and hope if he says it enough, that people will come to believe it.

So he says, "I've solved eight wars in eight months."

And you can hear his supporters say, "He solved eight wars in eight months."

In some of those cases, the countries involved didn't even know they were at war.

(audience laughing) - Yeah.

So just to back to Venezuela for one second.

Do we think that the world has a Maduro problem and that Venezuela has a Maduro problem, we're just not going about it the right way?

- Look, I think it's in the interest of the United States and the Venezuelan people to overthrow the Maduro government.

We tried to do that in the first term.

We were justified in doing it, we failed.

And one reason is we couldn't keep Trump's attention on what the necessary action was.

- Right.

- So now, he may or may not be trying to overthrow the Maduro regime again.

I think there's good reason to do it, but I think you have to have a strategy.

You can't just take unrelated actions on one day after another and expect that something's gonna come of it.

And the evidence so far is that Trump has no more strategic feel this time than he did last time.

- Let me ask you about a couple of our allies.

How is our relationship with the UK and France?

I mean, these are folks we have stood with alongside, we have common interests, but those relationships have not been smooth, to say the least, in this term.

And I'm wondering what you think about how we're approaching our allies, not just our enemies.

- Well, to take the allies as a whole, I think what Trump has done with his tariff policy- - [Evan] Yeah.

- Which has been applied not against the central problem in international trade, which is China.

- Right.

- But against everybody.

Trump has declared a trade war on the whole world.

And you know, with our allies in particular, there are always trade disagreements among countries.

The stakes are high, it's financial and business transactions that matter to the people of the countries involved.

But the way to solve those problems with your friends and allies is through negotiation, which is tough, it's hard.

- Yeah.

- But you don't launch a trade war against your best friends.

And what Trump has done is, by these actions, is undercut the reliance, the good faith, the trust that our best friends have had in us for decades.

And they wonder, "Why are we going through this?"

- Right, and, "Can we count on the United States?"

- And the shredding of all of that goodwill is Trump eating up what decades of his predecessors have tried to build up to- - Democrats and Republicans, right.

- To bring the allies closer together.

And now the erratic nature of the tariffs- - Right.

- 39% on Switzerland, what did Switzerland do- (audience laughing) - Right.

- That's caused this?

They wonder if he understands the full consequences of his actions and I don't think he does.

I think the tariffs are generally a very bad policy.

I think we've probably been lax over the years in worrying about national security implications of some trade decisions.

But that doesn't mean you have massive tariffs across the board.

This is gonna hurt Americans.

We know it already has hurt farmers.

And what's Trump's answer?

- Right.

- "Well, let's subsidize the farmers," to take more money away from Americans than the tariffs are already.

His support for the tariffs is based on a fundamental misconception.

He says to everybody, "We're making the foreigners pay."

The foreigners are not paying, Americans are paying.

- We're paying, right.

- This is a hidden tax on Americans.

And by the way, conservatives oppose tax increases normally.

The tariffs have increased people's cost or have resulted, in small businesses especially, earning less money.

- Right.

- This is contrary to the best economic interest of the American people.

- Well, and as you go back to this question of, is Trump a conservative?

Even if you assume he's not, by the traditional definition, at least people in Congress who are conservatives seem to be tacitly or enthusiastically going along with this.

- Well, I think they're intimidated by him, I think- - They should know better, even if he does not.

- And that's why they should stand up against him.

I believe that's beginning to happen.

I think Republicans, as they face the midterm elections, are saying, "We know tariffs are wrong."

- Yeah.

- Look at what happened when the province of Ontario, Canada ran an ad with just showing Ronald Reagan.

- Featuring that liberal, Ronald Reagan, right, yes.

(audience laughing) - Yeah, Ronald Reagan, remember him?

- Right.

- Saying why tariffs are generally bad.

Now, he had imposed some tariffs on Japan that he hoped would bring them to the bargaining table.

- Right.

- But his overall approach was anti tariff.

Trump has said the tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.

Ronald Reagan would've said, "You're a complete fool."

- Yeah, and of course, what did Trump then do?

He went and increased tariffs on Canada in retaliation for that ad.

- For an ad, it's just terrible to have to listen to Ronald Reagan, isn't it?

- Right.

But of course, what happened after that?

There was an apology.

- That was a big mistake by the Canadians.

- By the Canadians, I mean- - Yeah, absolutely.

- And in some ways, that's what we're seeing kind of across the board, is the bending of the knee in the direction of this.

And so it makes me wonder whether he's losing or winning.

- Well, I think within the Republican party, I do not think there's been fundamental change because I think people know what the right principles are.

- Yeah.

- And Trump is simply not following them.

He's not following any principle other than what benefits Donald Trump.

- Right.

- So the good news is the basic philosophy of the party remains intact.

It's still a Reaganite center right party.

The bad news is that people aren't willing to stand up and say it enough.

- Okay.

Ambassador Bolton, we're out of time.

I'm gonna hold you to your word.

When your case is resolved, come back.

- I would look forward to it.

- Okay, very good.

Ambassador John Bolton, thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, sir.

Good, alright, good one.

(audience applauding) We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

(light music) (light music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation and public affairs communication, ellergroup.com, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and Karey and Chris Oddo.

(light flute music)