The Room Where It Happened PDF Free Download

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Book overview

   John Bolton’s book The Room Where It Happened is a nonfiction memoir published in 2020 by American diplomat John Bolton. It chronicles Bolton’s 17-month tenure as national security advisor under President Donald Trump, during which he was party to some of the most important events in Trump’s presidency, including two summits with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the US’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and the 2019 Ukraine affair. The book drew controversy from both sides of the political spectrum, as Republicans characterized it as dishonest and Democrats objected to Bolton’s decision to publish his recollections of the Ukraine scandal as part of a $2 million book deal.

   Bolton and Mattis clash over withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, and Bolton attempts to dissuade Trump from meeting Kim Jong Un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. Despite no deal on denuclearization, Trump makes a dangerous concession when he vows to end US-South Korea joint military exercises. Bolton initially believes the summit is a success, but Trump sides with Putin against the US intelligence community. Bolton’s book discusses the June 2019 meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where Trump allegedly tried to leverage the purchase of American-grown soybeans in a plea for Xi to help him win the 2020 election. Trump also encouraged Xi to continue building concentration camps to detain Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in China.

   During the 2019 Ukraine scandal, Trump is fixated on baseless rumors spread by his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, accusing Ukraine of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the 2016 election and alleging vague wrongdoing by Joe Biden pertaining to his son’s involvement in a Ukrainian energy firm. Trump finally releases the aid on September 11, 2019, two days after Bolton resigns over a range of issues.

Summary of The Room Where It Happened

   John Bolton is the former National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump. He served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and has spent many years of his career in public service and held high-level positions in the Administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. He was born in Baltimore in 1948 and graduated with a BA, summa cum laude, from Yale College and received his JD from Yale Law School. He currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland. His White House memoir is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration and one of the few to date by a top-level official.

   Bolton’s account of his time in the White House reveals a President addicted to chaos, who embraced his enemies and spurned his friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy was about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. This led to the US losing an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, the US ended up in a more vulnerable place.

The long march to a west wing corner office

   The Trump Administration’s transformation is not due to an “axis of adults” managing Trump, but rather to the failure of the axis of adults to establish order and to feed Trump’s already-suspicious mind-set, making it harder for those who came later to have legitimatesite policy exchanges with the President. The role of the National Security Advisor is to ensure that a President understands what options are open to him for any given decision, and that this decision is carried out by the pertinent bureaucracies. However, the axis of adults had served Trump poorly, and he believed he could run the Executive Branch and establish national-security policies on instinct, relying on personal relationships with foreign leaders and made-for-television showmanship. Analysis, planning, intellectual discipline and rigor, evaluation of results, course corrections, and the like are the unglamorous side of presidential decision-making. Appearance takes you only so far. Paul Laxalt’s insight that “in politics, there are no immaculate conceptions” explains the intense competition for high-level jobs during the “presidential transition”. Transition teams provide good case studies for graduate business schools on how not to do business, as they are overwhelmed by incoming information, strategy and policy analyses, consequential personnel decisions, and media and interest-group scrutiny. Some transitions are better than others, such as Richard Nixon’s 1968-69 transition, Ronald Reagan’s 1980-81 transition, and Donald Trump’s 2016-17 transition.

   The role of the National Security Advisor is to ensure that a President understands what options are open to him for any given decision, and that this decision is carried out by the pertinent bureaucracies. However, the axis of adults had served Trump poorly, and he believed he could run the Executive Branch and establish national-security policies on instinct, relying on personal relationships with foreign leaders and made-for-television showmanship. Appearance takes you only so far. Trump’s transition and opening year-plus were botched, with many advisors with no prior service not reading the government’s “operators’ manual and the White House’s Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (“war of all against all”). I entered the existing chaos and saw problems that could have been resolved in the Administration’s first hundred days, but few seemed to realize it, care about it, or have any interest in fixing it. My approach to accomplishing things in government was to absorb as much as possible about the bureaucracies where I served, not to get a membership card but to get a driver’s license. In early visits to the West Wing, the differences between this presidency and previous ones were stunning, and it wasn’t going to get much better.

Review

   Bolton’s book “The Room Where It Happened” was set to be published in mid-March, but was delayed due to the National Security Council’s review of the manuscript for classified information. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit to try to prevent Bolton from profiting from any book sales, and the impeachment proceedings have been largely superseded by a pandemic and nationwide protests. Bolton, who refused to testify at the House impeachment hearings, may be the last person many Americans wish to hear from right now. Bolton’s book is filled with extraneous details and a festering obsession with his enemies, both abroad (Iran, North Korea) and at home (the media, “the High-Minded,” the former defense secretary Jim Mattis). It is bloated with self-importance and toggles between two discordant registers: tedious and slightly unhinged.

   His one shrewd storytelling choice is to leave the chapter on Ukraine for the end. Trump tried to ingratiate himself to Erdogan and Xi by dangling the possibility of removing or easing pressure on Halkbank and ZTE.

   In June 2019, Iran shot down an unmanned American drone, and John Bolton pushed Trump to approve a series of military strikes in retaliation. However, Trump decided to call off the strikes at the last minute after learning they would kill as many as 150 people. On Jan. 6, Bolton finally agreed to testify at the impeachment trial if the Republican-controlled Senate subpoenaed him, but his chapter on Ukraine is weird, circuitous and generally confounding.

The Room Where It Happened PDF Free Download