March 28, 2024

Factbox: All the president’s countries featured so far in ex-Trump adviser’s book

image

(Reuters) – China was not the only country mentioned in a litany of allegations that former national security adviser John Bolton makes about U.S. President Donald Trump in excerpts here published on Wednesday of his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

The following are other countries that feature in reports about Bolton’s book on his 17 months in Trump’s administration:

AFGHANISTAN

Trump confused the current and former presidents of Afghanistan multiple times, the Washington Post reported. The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for 18 years.

CHINA

Trump reversed penalties on Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE and, the following year, offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Huawei, seeing disputes involving the two firms not as policy issues but “an opportunity to make personal gestures to Xi,” one excerpt said, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The U.S. president also played down the significance of Taiwan and developments involving Hong Kong and China’s treatment of Uighur citizens, telling Xi at a June 2019 meeting that Xi should go ahead with building concentration camps in Xinjiang, according to the excerpt.

Trump also told Xi that Americans wanted the two-term constitutional limit on presidents to be repealed for him, the excerpt said.

FINLAND

Trump asked his former chief of staff John Kelly if Finland was part of Russia, according to the Post.

JAPAN

When advisers discussed the U.S. alliance with Japan, Trump became irate and railed about Pearl Harbor. He also asked Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to help him strike a deal with Iran, the Post reported.

NORTH KOREA

Trump was determined to befriend North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, deciding to give him some gifts, which violated U.S. sanctions and for which those sanctions eventually needed to be waived, the Post reported.

Bolton said Trump cared little about denuclearization efforts and only saw it as “an exercise in publicity,” according to the Post.

After the first summit with Kim in Singapore in 2018, Trump repeatedly asked about Kim’s receipt of an autographed copy of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” on CD during Pompeo’s visit afterward to North Korea, the Post said.

Trump had insulted Kim by calling him “Little Rocket Man” but had since sought to convince Kim it was an affectionate term.

But Pompeo had not seen Kim in North Korea. Getting the CD to Kim remained a priority for several months, the Post reported. It was not immediately clear if Kim received the recording.

RUSSIA

Trump told Defense Secretary James Mattis that Russia should take care of the Islamic State militant group, according to the Post.

SAUDI ARABIA

In 2018, Trump wrote a defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman amid outcry over the killing of journalist and prominent royal critic, Jamal Khashoggi.

The main goal of the defense was to distract from news coverage of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, using her personal email for government business, the Post reported Bolton saying – something Trump had repeatedly lambasted his opponent, Hillary Clinton, for doing during the 2016 election.

TURKEY

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gave Trump a memo saying a Turkish firm under investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York for violating Iranian sanctions was innocent.

“Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton wrote, according to the Washington Post.

At one point, Bolton learned a top Trump adviser, Jared Kushner, would be calling Turkey’s finance minister because he was Erdogan’s son-in-law, referring to it as “this new ‘son-in-law channel.’”

When Bolton informed U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of the call, Pompeo was furious “because this was one more example of Kushner’s doing international negotiations he shouldn’t have been doing (along with the never quite ready Middle East peace plan),” according to the Post.

UKRAINE

Bolton broadly confirmed allegations that Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in a bid to help Trump win his November re-election bid, according to U.S. media reports.

Trump became the third U.S. president to face impeachment, but he remained in office after a Senate vote that largely fell along partisan lines.

UNITED KINGDOM

In a meeting with Theresa May, who was Britain’s prime minister at the time, Trump interjected asking if London was a nuclear power, according to the Post.

VENEZUELA

Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool” and the country was “really part of the United States,” the Post said.

The United States has recognized Juan Guaido, the head of the Venezuelan national assembly, as the country’s leader, a move that Trump approved.

But within 30 hours, Trump worried that Guaido looked weak compared to “tough” Nicolas Maduro and considered changing course, according to the Post.

Compiled by Makini Brice; editing by Grant McCool

This post originally appeared on and written by:
Reuters Editorial
Reuters

Share
Source: