WASHINGTON — The last time — perhaps the only time — John R. Bolton inspired bipartisan agreement, it was over the shared conclusion that he was perhaps the least diplomatic personality a president could have ever picked to be an American diplomat.
That was in 2005, when Mr. Bolton was last considered for a government job. Accounts of his red-faced tirades against intelligence analysts whose findings he disagreed with so concerned members of the Senate that they refused to approve his nomination as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.
He wound up getting the job anyway through a recess appointment [...]
Thirteen years later, another president has given Mr. Bolton the far more consequential job of national security adviser. But because that post does not require Senate confirmation, the five months in 2005 that the Senate took to decide whether Mr. Bolton should go to the United Nations remain the only extensive examination of his record and his temperament.
Those who opposed him then, like Carl W. Ford Jr., along with many who supported him, say Mr. Bolton has not changed.
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In an appearance before a Senate committee vetting Mr. Bolton’s nomination in 2005, Mr. Ford, a former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research in the Bush administration, summed up Mr. Bolton, then an under secretary of state for arms control and international security, as a “kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy.”
“I believed then, as I believe now, he lacks any of the qualities to be a senior government official,” Mr. Ford said last week. “It has been my experience that his mouth is much bigger than his brain.”
... his mouth is much bigger than his brain.
A Trump appointee. Go figure.
Back then -
Testifying before the committee, Mr. Bolton presented himself as a reformer who would go to the United Nations and help “build institutions that serve as the cornerstone of freedom in nascent democracies,” curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons and support a global war on terror promised by the Bush administration.
He also sought to explain his comment — famous even by then — that if the top 10 stories of the 38-story United Nations Secretariat building were lopped off, “it wouldn’t make a bit of difference” by asserting that it “was a way of saying there’s not a bureaucracy in the world that can’t be made leaner and more efficient.”
Mr. Bolton’s public statements, it turned out, were the least of his problems.
Over seven hours on that first day, Democrats explored allegations by intelligence officials that Mr. Bolton had gone after two analysts who disagreed with his views on Cuba’s biological weapons capability.
Mr. Bolton was preparing for a speech in which he would accuse a range of nations, including Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Syria, of possessing chemical and biological weapons when he sought clearance from the intelligence officials for an assertion he wanted to make that Cuba was developing a biological weapons program, a claim that was not, in fact, fully supported by American intelligence.
Christian Westermann, a State Department intelligence analyst specializing in biological and chemical weapons, and an unnamed national intelligence official responsible for Latin America disagreed with the claims about Cuba that Mr. Bolton sought to make.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, told the committee that “trying to remove someone as an analyst from their job because you disagree with what they’re saying, I think, is dreadfully wrong.”
Mr. Bolton responded that he had targeted the two officers for reassignment, not for firing, because “If I may say so, their conduct was unprofessional and broke my confidence and trust.”
[...] It also emerged that Mr. Bolton had prevented Ms. Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, from seeing some State Department findings crucial to drafting policy on Iran, and had kept Ms. Rice out of the loop as he worked to replace Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, seen by Mr. Bolton and his administration faction as too soft on Iran.
A grudge holding backstabber. Not a Trump nominee. Not where responsible people would have a say in sidetracking bad decision making. An appointee, a high level one, but where no power among the sane of review and restraint exists. It is as if Trump misses having Bannon around and sought a surrogate.
Of interest Bolton has a Wikipedia page, stating (with footnote links included, footnotes omitted):
2016
Bolton considered running in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In an interview with National Review, Robert Costa wrote the following, quoting Bolton:
He wants to be president of the United States, or, at the very least, a provocative contender for the Republican nomination in 2016. 'My hypothesis is that voters are practical and they care more about national security than the media seems to believe; I think, right now, especially after two terms of President Obama, they want a president who has the know-how to lead during a crisis, a president who can defend our national interests,' he says.[173]
After expressing interest in running for President, Bolton ultimately ruled himself out on May 14, 2015, in a video message posted from Twitter.[174]
On Wednesday, September 30, 2015, Freedom Capital Investment Management appointed Bolton as a senior advisor to oversee the firm on international security, financial and political risks.[175]
John Bolton Super PAC
In 2013, Bolton set up the John Bolton Super PAC. It raised $11.3 million for Republican candidates in the 2014 and 2016 elections and spent $5.6 million, paying Cambridge Analytica at least $650,000 for voter data analysis and digital video ad targeting in support of the campaigns of Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Scott Brown (R-M.A.).[176][177] In September 2016, Bolton announced that his SuperPAC would spend $1 million on (R-N.C.) Senator Richard Burr's reelection effort by targeting ads at "social media users and Dish Network and Direct TV subscribers".[178]
The Center for Public Integrity analysed the John Bolton Super PAC's campaign finance filings and found that they paid Cambridge Analytica more than $1.1 million since 2014 for "research" and "survey research".[179] According to Federal Election Commission filings, Cambridge Analytica was paid more than $811,000 by them in the 2016 presidential election;[180] in the same election cycle, the Super PAC spent around $2.5 million in support of Republican U.S. Senate candidates.[179]
Bolton reportedly stated that he aims to raise and spend $25 million for up to 90 Republican candidates in the 2018 midterm elections.[181] In January 2018, Bolton announced a $1 million advertising campaign in support of Kevin Nicholson's bid for the Republican nomimation [sic] to run against incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.[181][182] The Super PAC ran an ad campaign in the Green Bay area in January 2018; on March 19, 2018, the Super PAC announced a two-week $278,000 television and radio ad campaign in the Milwaukee area.[183]
Major donors to the John Bolton Super PAC reportedly are Robert Mercer, who gave $4 million from 2012 to 2016; Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, and Los Angeles real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer.[176]
Trump administration position
In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald Trump named Bolton as a possible choice for Secretary of State. Appearing on Fox News' Fox and Friends on December 1, 2016, Bolton admitted he was being considered as a Secretary of State candidate for the incoming Trump administration.[184][185] Several Trump associates claim Bolton was not chosen, in part, due to Trump's disdain for Bolton's signature mustache.[186]
Go to the Wikipedia page for footnote content and earlier career detail. And, unfortunately, the dumb mustache did not stop the latest Trump brain fart. It would not surprise to see Mercer money and Trump favor connected by reporting, something that may already be happening. [see following post, updating]