Bolton is looking ahead—and not even that far ahead. Kim Jong Un has, in the past few years alone, assassinated his own brother, a CIA asset, in Malaysia. He delivered an American citizen, Otto Warmbier, back to the United States with his brain scrambled. He has flatly refused to denuclearize, even when presented lavish incentives to do so by Trump, in person. When this pattern of misbehavior continues, the president caught grinning with Kim Jong Un will look like a naïf.
And then there is the issue of Trump’s shadow national security adviser, Tucker Carlson, who serves unofficially while hosting his nightly show. Carlson’s hatred of Bolton is sincere and mutual: Watch the clip of Bolton sarcastically complimenting Carlson’s “long experience in foreign policy”; “Better record than yours,” Carlson replies. (Carlson, who supported the Iraq War and occupation, says he feels burned by the neoconservatives who persuaded him to do so.) Carlson has inserted himself into the frame of this bizarre and impromptu diplomatic trip, and that is exactly where the Boltonites want him: forever associated with a handshake that will be recorded as a new low in the annals of presidential gullibility.
To have both the Tapeworm and Fox News’s bow-tied anthelmintic in the same entourage would have been too much. One of them had to go, and the one who went, went as far away in the region as he could. What remains is a question of dignity. For how long will Bolton remain in Trump’s service, when Trump ignores his counsel and fraternizes with a talk-show host who ridicules him? I predict that Bolton will stay in office long enough to watch Trump make a few more errors, on the advice of someone else. Then the tapeworm will emerge.
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