with an nyu professor who says technology is arming the social development and mental health of children. later, fed chairman jerome powell speaking at a microeconomic -- microeconomics and monetary policy conference tonight at 9:00 eastern. all on c-span, and online at c-span.org. ♪ do you solemnly swear that in the testimony you are about to give, will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god? >> saturdays, watch american history tv's new series, " congress investigates," as we approach major investigations in our country's history. each week authors and historians will tell the stories, we will see historic footage, and examine the impact and legacy of

key congressional hearings. this week, the 1912 committee investigating the sinking of the titanic. witnesses testified about warnings that were ignored, the inadequate number of lifeboats, the unequal treatment of passengers. we find out what congress did about it, and how that affects travel overseas today. saturdays at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. announcer: next, john bolton is interviewed by john conway about his experiences working as a national security advisor in the trump administration. he also shares his thoughts on what a second trump presidency might look like. hosted by the society for the rule of law, this is about an hour and a half. [chatter] >> hello everybody. thanks for making your way over here.

i hope you had a chance to enjoy a libation, you will have that opportunity again at the end of our program. thank you for joining this evening's exciting and important program with ambassador and former national security advisor john bolton. i am alan raul, board member and secretary of the society for the rule of law. a couple of housekeeping items before we get started with the subsequent program, which i think will be fascinating -- senator liebermann, who was an important figure and bipartisan moderate in many regards, if in sync some of the attributes and qualities that we might have an interest in seeing more of. so just a moment of recognition that he has passed away, as we ensure everyone knows at this point, so. thank you. so, i will be introducing judge corduroy -- george conway, the

president of the society of the rule of law, and ambassador. but first i want to note that the event is hosted by the society for the rule of law affiliated 501(c) four, i am sure there is great significance to that. but i am just the messenger. so the society for the rule of law, we are working to create a pro-democracy and pro-rule of law attorneys, scholars and law students and others traveling generally in our conservative direction. pro-democracy, pro-rule of law, you wouldn't think these would be controversial positions that need intense defending, but that is the type of defense. so for those of you who are not already members of the society for, we hope that you will visit our website, which is quite easy to remember. but easy also to have typos in:

www.societyfortheruleoflaw.org. please visit the website and consider joining and certainly to learn more about the society. and we post our substantive materials there as well as upcoming events and so on. we have a series of additional great programming that will not top tonight's program, but still, should be quite interesting and even fun. we have a summer associated event for the law students coming in and we will be doing details available for that shortly. i anticipate we will be having a virtual event, which has not yet been announced, but since you are here tonight, i am letting you in on that secret the supreme court's oral argument in the criminal immunity case. i am not at liberty to disclose

who will be speaking about that, but it will be a great panel. just as we have held virtual events of the 14th amendment,, insurrection disqualification case as well as the murthy case which involve the administration's jawboning efforts with the social media platforms and alleged disinformation. also i am very pleased to announce that the society for the rule of law has brought in greg nuziata as our executive director. [applause] this is a very, very exciting development, it really works that we are kind of a grown-up society now that we have not only an executive director, but one of greg has in five senators rubio, boone, and specter and served as

on the senate judiciary committee. he is familiar with many of the issues the society for the rule of law is interested in. tonight's event is on the record. we do have members of the press here in attendance. video will be posted to the society's youtube page after the event. so, after my introductions, ambassador bolton will make keynote remarks and there will be a conversation between george conway and ambassador bolton. the audience will have an opportunity to ask westerns and have answers. the last question could be where do we go to get additional libations? that will be at about 8:00 where we entered from. so, turning without further ado, that was enough to do. to an introduction of george conway, our board president for the society of the rule of law,

and our organizing founder and charter member along with stuart kherson, another board member and members of our advisory council here as well. in addition to having -- being president for the society of the rule of law, george is a contributor to the atlantic magazine, cohort -- cohost of a hit legal affairs podcast george conway explains it all. he will only explain a lot of it tonight but elsewhere he explains it all. our featured guest tonight john bolton is of course the former national security adviser and u.s. ambassador to the united nations under george w. bush. he served as under the secretary of state roms control of international security, and for the office of legislative affairs and doj.

i had the privilege of working with him on ronald reagan's judicial appointments when i was in the counsel's office. by the way, there are many many other positions ambassador bolton and the country has had the privilege of having his service in. but that would be too long and delay us yet further. amid the many other activities dedicated to advancing u.s. national security, he also operates a political action immunity -- committee as well as two other organizations. the foundation for american security and freedom and the institute for a secure america, all part of his effort and interest to raise awareness of the importance of national purity and the threat of isolationism and to support federal candidates that advocate for strong national security policies. naturally, everyone here should purchase a copy of and even proceed to read the new addition

of ambassador bolton's latest book including, his very timely new forward. with that, ambassador bolton. ambassador bolton: alan thank you for the kind words and thank you from date -- for the invitation for the sites -- for the society. i want to be clear that i favor the rule of law. this is an obviously important time to talk about what a second donald trump term would look like if that eventuates. there is no electoral content to the discussion tonight. that is why it is the c4 doing it i assume. but, the important issues that i

think people need to think about before november. and in the forward to the book i talk about what i think a second trump termite mean. the book itself is a 500 page explanation of what might experience in the first term was. people often say to me, why did you work for donald trump? i have tried to respond. look, i heard everything about him that i think anybody had heard. i had met with him beforehand. i met with him several times in his first year as president. nobody has ever called me naïve. i thought i knew what i was getting into. and i had one other relief. that was that donald trump, like every one of his 44 predecessors would be disciplined by the gravity of the responsibility that he held, at least, in the national security space.

and the enormous consequences of the decisions he would make would force him, as his predecessors did, to think long and hard about national security decisions. the book is 500 pages of explaining why in 17 months i found out that i was wrong about that. that nothing disciplines them. we live through the consequences in the first term and we might well have to live with the consequences in the second term. what i described in the forward are a number of things that i think would be important to think about in the second term. first, as he says frequently, on the campaign trail, this will be a retribution presidency. now, he says that the deep state or whatever you want to call it comes against him because he stands between his enemies and

followers. they are really after his followers and he is just kind of taking the heat. the retribution, he says, will be on behalf of his supporters, not about him personally. of course it is about donald trump personally. everything is to him. so, when he says that mark milley, for example,, for doing the right thing during the tumultuous time after the 2020 election, he called his chinese counterpart and said, do not read this wrong, there is really nothing here you should be worried about. donald trump describes that as treason. he reminds people that back in the day the penalty for treason was hanging. should mark milley be worried if donald trump gets a second term? absolutely. one of my favorite preoccupations during my time as

national security advisor was counting how many times donald trump said that john kerry should be prosecuted for violating the logan act because of what he said about our iran policy. i have long thought the logan act was unconstitutional to begin with. but, donald trump remembered it was threatened against mike flynn and he never let it go. anybody that thinks he has forgotten about the logan act would be mistaken. we will hear a lot about that too. people question, i think, how exactly the retribution would take place. because, after all, donald trump will have to go through the justice department. he won't bring the cases on his own. he will have to use attorneys at the department. as he thought he could during the first term because he believed then, and i think still believes, that people in the government, political appointees, or, career people

should be loyal to him. that is what he asked of james comey in a famous early conversation. loyalty to the convert -- the constitution is really too abstract for trump. you are with him or you are not with him. so, the justice department will be, along with the defense department and in the intelligence community, i think, bearing the brunt of a lot of the retribution presidency. i will come back to that in a minute. i will try to explain how i think it will work. i think what this will mean, really, the second point is we will be in continuing crisis, turmoil, chaos, perhaps, amounting to constitutional problems throughout hilly -- throughout a second trump term because he will begin where he left off and pick it up again as if the intervening four years had not happened. and since he was on a downhill

trajectory in terms of his adherence to constitutional norms and the rule of law, he will be on her downhill trajectory from day one. the best i can say is, he will be a lame-duck president when he was -- is sworn in again. so we can see the endpoint if we can just make it there. and they also say in the forward that people will find out, if they did not get it in the first term, that donald trump does not have a philosophy. he does not think in policy terms as we understand that. he thinks anecdotally, transactionally, and always through the prism of how it benefits donald trump. charles krauthammer once told me , and i think he said this publicly, that he really got donald trump wrong initially. originally he thought he was an 11-year-old. he realized really he is a one-year-old. like all one-year-olds, the only

thing they care about is, how does this benefit me? i think that will emerge. people that believe donald trump is a conservative will see is not. there is already evidence of that. i'm not saying he is a liberal. he's not. he's nothing. he believes in donald trump and that is the alpha and the omega. and finally in the forward i talk as links -- at links about things he will get wrong in national secure the policy. there has recently been a lot of discussion about his views on nato. i think from my own experience he will try to withdraw from nato. this will be a catastrophic mistake for the u.s., not just because of the dissolution of the alliance in the north atlantic, but for consequences with other american alliances around the world. and that is just the beginning

of that story and i am happy to come back to it. and i do want to talk about how the retribution will be carried out through the justice department. i can claim some expertise in this field since he practiced on me in 2020 when i brought the book out to begin with. the way it unfolded was because of the decision we made, correctly, with chuck cooper, another former assistant attorney general. we served together in the reagan adjuster -- reagan justice department general ed nace who canceled me -- counseled me and worked together on the book. we went into the prepublication process hoping we would get through in a timely fashion. but, we heard early on that

through a press leak, basically, a leak to a press that donald trump edits -- had a strategy. that first he would make me go through what i will call the normal prepublication review and then if the book was cleared he would just start another one. and delay and delay until we got past the election. i am not telling any of this story necessarily for what i had to go through. but, as an example of how a system can be corrupted. by somebody like donald trump when they are determined to do it. the prepublication review process has had its critics, much of that justified and people have feared it could be misused for political purposes. and that is exactly what i went through. donald trump said publicly, because he usually says the quiet part out loud, that the book is filled with classified

information, but it is ok if i publish it after the election. that tells you all you need to know about what his motivation was. anyway, i started into the prepublication review process and it was grueling. i did not think there was anything classified in it. i did not leak anything or write anything with the intention of myself to classifying things. i was just in tell the story. i won't go into it at length, but in the course of the litigation that eventually ensued ken weinstein, who i think is probably known to a lot of folks in here, represented the national security staffer that was doing the prepublication review. her name was ellen knight. he filed a document in court that goes into this in great detail. it was kind of a proffer of what her testimony would be and we have copies of it and i am happy to email it, for anybody that is a lawyer or interested in the

rule of law, this document by ken weinstein is one of the best legal documents i have ever seen filed. it was not, i can assure you, entirely favorable to me. ellen knight said during the course of our extensive work on the prepublication review that at times i was impatient and growth -- gruff. me, really? i will admit to impatient, how about that? it told the story in more detail that i will go into tonight. but the fact is, after a very extensive period, she cleared the manuscript, as modified, saying there is no classified information in it and she sent to the white house counsel's office where lawyers that work on this see stuff in any other case would sign off on her letter curing it and away we go.

but, she had experienced some sort of more oversight, i will put it that way, than in prior prepublication reviews. when she was not getting clearance from white house counsel, and i realized she was not getting clearance from white house counsel, i called her several times over about a nine or 10 day timeframe. she finally asked one of the lawyers in the white house counsel's office what was holding things up? she was told that the delay was due to their focus on the covid pandemic crisis. that is what she told me. because that's what they told her. that is a complete falsehood, as kins letter to the court -- ken's letter to the court shows. unbeknownst ellen knight, a senior official, a director of record management at the nsc.

her home agency was the national archives where she specialized in classification issues. the white house counsel's office had started its own separate prepublication review because they didn't like her answers. buyer lawyer known to almost everybody in this room i expect named michael ellis who had never done a prepublication review in his life but he started right away. they did not ever tell ellen knight that. well, when i realized that there was no clearance that would be coming, notwithstanding that the book had been cleared, i decided to go ahead and publish it. which, ultimately, patted the white house to the point that they got the justice department to bring a case to try to join the distribution of the book and under the provisions of the

agreement people sign on prepublication review as the supreme court has interpreted to recoup any profits or royalties that i might drive from the book. in preparation of this litigation, they basically officials that you know in the white house counsel's office, names you are familiar with, as well as with the department of justice, basically lied to the court. ken weinstein's letter lays out what they did. in the course of preparing the case. they came and talked to ellen knight as they had to because she and her team had cleared the books. he names the name so i will name them here. pat philbin led the interrogation of ellen knight and tried to get her to say, look, it is just a matter of opinion. she had one opinion. michael ellis had another one.

and couldn't ellis be right? as he says in the letter, she responded that it was not a difference of opinion, but rather, a difference between a prepublication review process conducted with the goal of producing a publishable manuscript, and, a classification review, a process conducted with the goal of blocking publication. so, so, the white house lawyers and justice lawyers tried to force ellen knight to sign a document basically that said she had done something wrong in clearing the book. weinstein writes over the course of five days and a total of 18 hours of meetings, a rotating cast of justice department and white house attorneys tried to persuade ms. knight to sign a

declaration they wanted to file with their lawsuit against ambassador bolton. they made their case for the declaration while ms. knight voiced her reservations about it your and she had a lot of reservations, obviously, about the substance of it. and then, about the process that she was going through. this was 18 hours over five days. i case they forgot the rubber hoses. but for example, she asked to see the michael ellis review and what he had designated as classified. they refused to show it to her. she said they had less interest in resolving the concerns cited in the documents, and more interest in using them as a basis for blocking publication. then this. ms. knight asked the attorneys

how it could be appropriate that a decidedly apolitical process had been commandeered by political appointees for a seemingly political purpose. she asked them to explain why they were so insistent on pursuing litigation rather than resolving the potential national security issues through engagement with ambassador bolton and her team. the attorneys had no answer for her challenges. however, when ellen knight speculated the litigation was happening because the most powerful man in the world needed to happen, several registered their agreement with that diagnosis. she asked that they called her supervisor from the national archives to sit with her through these 18 hours of meetings, with another specialist in classification issues.

and they refuse to do that. after these five days of interrogations, she informed the nsc legal advisor she would not sign the declaration. the nsc legal advisor she would not sign the declaration. and, they went and filed their case and referenced her work. referenced her work. they had been working without any reference to what she had done. to pat philbin. assigned to a case when they filed it because if you are to do it he resigned. the next day. i think that tells you something. ultimately, the injunction was denied, the book was distributed. the case continued until joe

biden was elected and ultimately, the justice department agreed to dismiss it with prejudice because there was not anything to it. because chuck cooper had one a motion to get discovery of that is government's decision-making and what the white house said to the department of justice, which, even the biden administration did not want to see. this was a two-year abuse, a clear apostolate of cessation -- a clear politicization of prepublication review for the objective of donald trump's political put a fish. it went beyond that too. the only reason the government is entitled to get somebody's manuscript is to ensure no classified information comes out. there is no prior restraint in the u.s.. they aren't there to give a literary review of an author or for any other purpose, for that

matter. however, this being the donald trump administration, that is not the case. the way this should work is that there is no interference in what we're of specialists are doing in classification review. steve hadley, one of my predecessors, a national security advisor, told me the story of when georgia tenants book as is -- on his time as csi director -- cia director came in for prepublication to -- review when george w. bush was president. steve was informed of this and told the record management director what you need to do and don't tell me anything more about it. then he went down and told president bush what he says. president bush said, that's exactly right. the next thing i want to hear about this book is the day it is published. that is how you do it.

you think the trump administration didn't like that? no way. at one point, the book was still in prepublication review and there was a leak to the new york times about the chapter on ukraine. i don't know who did that. i certainly did not. whoever did it was no friend of mine. in panic -- it panic the white house lawyers because they did not really know what the book said. i am not making this up. it's from jared kushner's book, "breaking history", a modest title. where he solves the problem. he tells the president basically, look, we will just find out what the book says because it is down in the nsc for review. he went to see my successor robert o'brien. he said i want to see the book. o'brien said i haven't locked in

her safe. no one has seen it other than me. and, the career official reviewing it for classified information. gerrit shows o'brien the new york times story of the week about what is in the book. he says this is jared writing in his own book "i need to know what bolton says in his manuscript about ukraine aid and whether there is anything explosive or new dock"." o'brien said he won't show the manuscript, but in this session there section he says something really interesting and that he describes the section on ukraine. quoting jared. it is safe for me to assume he does not directly quote the president in a way that directly contradicts defense.

jared rushed back to the desk and drafted a statement and called the white house operator to talk to the president, jared saving the president again. robert brian proved he is no steve hadley. and what jared proves in his own book is that is another abuse of the prepublication review process. answer may have been others. i take you through the story because how it actually happened is how it will happen again. over and over again. two people that joined the department of justice to work for donald trump. and why the burden on them to resign at some point will be intense and, the pressure on the career attorneys will be equally intense. this is what i retribution president will look like. thank you very much.

>> thank you for that, john. i don't want to be trump like and make it about myself but we have two connections. one, when john was at il law school was a guy i ultimately worked for. that brought us together in a way that i don't know i can thoroughly explain. the other thing was i turned down the job, i was slated to have the job you had in the justice department of the attorney general for the civil division. i was hired by jodi hunt and his boss jeff sessions. it turned out jodi hunt designed after signing the pleading. and this leads me to a question. so many people in the administration --, i mean it was

the quiet quitting version of resigning and protesting. so many people did not do that and stayed to the very end including pat sullivan, who, to his credit, stud -- stood up against trump when it came to january 6 and attempts to steal the election. why is it that people like ellen knight and many of whom we saw testifying in the investigation and impeachment, why do these lower-level people, these staffers, end up being people that eventually stand up to trump? >> it is a good question and i think everybody had to make an individual decision about what they would do. you mentioned ellen knight again. she was a career employee. jobs at the nsc are at the pleasure of the president.

but he hired her not because she was doing her job but because she had done her job. i found out about that after joe biden was a, i set out to get her the job back. i thought it was unfair to say the least. and again i give steve hadley credit. because i don't think the biden administration was particularly disposed to listen to me, but they did listen to steve and some democratic national security advisers, condoleezza rice, and others so ellen knight has her job back. and i hope for longer than january 20 of next year. >> so your gruffness helped? >> i hope. >> you talk about trump's definition of treason. i know in that you wrote in your revised forward that when general milley was reported to

have had conversations with his chinese counterpart during the battle over the 2020 election, telling the chinese that we were under control and would not fire off anything, he got a lot of positive city. donald trump's reaction was treason. what is donald trump's understanding of treason? >> in part anybody that gets publicity he thinks he got to get. it's easy just throw that word around. he and others in the administration did throw it around. it reflects his understanding of treason is entirely personal. it's not treason against the country. it is treason against donald trump and that the standard he applies to people. it happens no matter how much loyalty you get him over an

extended time. if the time comes when he is done with you, then saying anything to the contrary is treason. ask ronna mcdaniel how it feels to be an ex-employee of nbc now because of what she did and donald trump's reaction when she gets fired is to mark her. that is donald trump acting out how he would deal with treason. >> you said in your talks tonight that nothing disciplined him. what you mean by that? why? ambassador bolton: i am not a shrink. i don't do shrink talk. but i believe that since he believes the world revolves around him, whatever he can get away with he is entitled to. he has had a very successful record of escaping dilemmas that would crush the careers of other business people other politicians. in a way, we might disagree over

this point, but i will give you an example. he famously said, i could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody and get away with it. when of fifth avenue and shoot somebody and get away with it. when the democrats launched the first impeachment effort based on the ukraine question, perhaps they thought they could get him convicted, although it was conducted the way that led to a partisan division that met

arithmetically, they were never going to get two-thirds of the votes in the senate. a belief that that impeachment would constrain and inhibit and constrict trump. it emboldened and empowered him and he got away with it again. he felt, if i can beat impeachment this time, i could would say -- donald trump would say richard nixon is a loser and that is the way he views it. when you deal with that kind of personality, you can't treat him like an ordinary person. he does not react the same way.

>> amen. that is something i have said for a while. you mentioned we might have disagreement about the ukraine pieces. but in the epilogue to your book that came out roughly at the time of the acquittal give or take a month, you said something that fascinated me. that was, your issue with the democrats was not so much that they charged him with impeachment for ukraine because you thought ukraine's situation was one in which he was using the power of his office to benefit himself. which we all agree with. you thought it didn't go far enough because he thought it was part of a larger pattern and that is what the impeachment should have been a part. do i have that right? >> exactly. i told that to several republicans and democrats, in fact. republican said, nancy pelosi needs to get this over with.

she is scared of the impact of her caucus. she wants a rifle shot impeachment. we think we can get that -- get through with it and be done. and if you read rachel bates' book about what the democrats went through, you will see that it was accurate and it was motivated by a political desire not to make it broader because it would be harder for the democratic caucus. which is a kind of, in my view, political mishandling of the impeachment. call it political malpractice. >> impeachment malpractice. , exactly right. and because of the way they did it, they drove republicans who may have been willing to do it to begin with, but they drove them into reflexive opposition to anything. the one thing you can say going back to watergate was that, over the course of that urban committee hearings and the judiciary committee hearings in the house is that republicans?

-- republicans became convinced that nixon had to go. there was no effort to convince republicans of that here. and it takes time. the word impeachment was a long, drawn out process that ultimately resulted in nixon being removed. if you are trying to ram it through and get it done because you got a majority in the house, you can do it. we did it with the impeachment, with clinton, and it was a mistake because we had no chance of convicting him in the senate and we did not try. now we have made impeachment almost a common event and i think that is a real problem. >> so the problem with trump was that it wasn't just ukraine. it was everything. the way he conducted himself and the way he narcissistically viewed himself as the center of everything in the there were his generals across the river. and that treason is anything that undermines him.

and that isn't consistent with oath of office. >> the way he treated other things. i talk about his dealings with president erdoaan of tarkiye over the halkbank prosecution that was going on in the southern district of new york. and i did tell bill barr and i did tell pat cipollone. you've got to watch this conduct because the president, as he once told to erdogan sitting in a bilateral meeting with him and erdogan complaining about this criminal prosecution against halkbank. which he and his family basically used the turkish treasury for their own personal uses. trump said that those were four people. when i get my people in, we are gonna take care of this. i about fell out of the chair there. i told the administration's lawyers that they could deal with it. i was accused often enough when i was national security adviser stepping on other people's turf. i had plenty of things to do,

but i told him. the information was there. on the impeachment side, people would wanted to do it thoroughly and methodically, they could have turned it up but that's not what they wanted to do. >> when you left the white house, imagine if when you left, you could have spoken to yourself when you took the job. what would you have said to yourself? >> the first thing i would have said was, "you're an idiot." [laughter] the second thing i would have said was, "do it anyway." and based on what you know now, if you can carry that knowledge back, maybe you can ultimately be more effective. because in my time in the white house, the united states was lucky that we escaped really significant international threats. but we also lost a huge number of opportunities, because there

are only 24 hours in the day, and so, much of the time was spent just trying to get trump to go from a to b to c on policies that he theoretically agreed with. so keeping their train going down the tracks consumed time that should have been diverted to broader policy planning and contingency planning. i also think i could have been more effective. i think it is a real dilemma trump wins for people who may want to serve in the second trump term. lawyers will go to the justice department are putting their ethics and their professional reputation on the line almost from the day they sign up. i think there are other pressures in the defense and state and intelligence community. but that will be a real issue.

and part of the reason, i think, chaos and confusion will mark the second trump term if he wins. >> yearbook was about a lot of chaos and confusion in the first trump administration. what was it like? >> i said in the book that working in the trump white house was like living in the pinball machine. trump could range across subjects that made no sense to take up one after the other. he just kept talking. and what i finally decided at one point was that when i had the answer that i thought was the right answer, i just said, mr. president, i have got something to do. there was no really effective policy process that involved the president. when in one case in particular -- we tried to keep it going at the lower levels, but without an engaged president, you are not going to be successful. one example i talk about at length in the book is we went

through a brent scowcroft, quality national security council decision that the u.s. would retaliate against iran when they shot down one of our drones over international space over the persian gulf. we did everything you were supposed to do. everything you were supposed to do. he authorized the decision, and about three hours before it was going to happen, a lawyer from the white house counsel's office ran in and said he had heard from lawyers in the pentagon that 150 iranians might be killed. now, that was on the basis of soviet-era training manuals that describe how to operate the particular targets we were looking at. we didn't know how many were going to -- but we were going to do it at night to minimize casualties, we had talked about that precise point. trump called the raid off. that was bad enough. the next morning, he tweeted about it at length, describing exactly what he had done. that is the kind of thing that

really if i had written that as a novel, a publisher would have rejected it. because they would have said it is simply impossible to believe the president would behave like that. but that happened in one respect or another everyday. one more example. we were committed to support juan guaido, who we consider the legitimate president of venezuela, against maduro. that was our policy. trump was sort of up-and-down. but one day, we had juan guaido's wife and away from his chief of staff who maduro had thrown in a very vile prison in venezuela, in to see trump. and he talked about it in front of the press. it went well. it was a good help to the people of venezuela. i was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. we escorted mrs. guaido and the other parties out.

i went back in to say, this is really going to be helpful for the people of venezuela. and he said, "did you notice she wasn't wearing a wedding ring?" i said "what?" , that's what trump had noticed. >> of course. >> i mean, what did you want me to say? >> i will tell you a story. the first time i ever heard him talk about you once, it was during the transition. i got roped into going to a party out in long island with my wife and the president and steve bannon. and we all hopped into an suv with this massive motorcade was -- he was president-elect of the united states. it was crazy. and the subject came, what easy -- who is he going to a appoint to the secretary of state? and somebody said well, john bolton. and he couldn't stop talking about your mustache. [laughter] it was like 10, 15 minutes about the mustache.

i swear to god. as god is my witness. but anyway. [laughter] >> ok, thanks for that, george. [laughter] >> i am going to follow up on the other question i asked about what you would have told john, priee administration john bolton. suppose you are having that conversation today with pre- administration john bolton, what you learned since you left the white house, thinking about the things that you saw and having written the book and having watched the insurrection and his conduct after the election -- anything else you would add to what he would have said to him? >> well, i think -- what happened in the run-up to january 6 and what we know about what he did and would he tried to do, i would have thought it would have finished his career. i am still amazed that he is

about to get the republican nomination for president. i think it wouldn't necessarily have affected what i did in taking the job and what i did when i was there, but i think on january 20, 2021, i would not have breathed a sigh of relief, i would've had a better sense, knowing now that he is coming back as a nominee and may win the election, that we all made a mistake in releasing our breath on the 20th of january -- >> we did. >> then we should have started on january 21 to worry about him. it may not have changed where we are today, but we didn't try soon enough. >> so, and other instances him -- instance of him acting in his own interest and engaging in retribution. in his first term, security clearances. you write a lot in the book about his discussions about pulling security clearances of

former officials. can you tell us about that? >> it was an instant he had whenever anybody criticized him. and it wasn't because the former officials had at least classified information. he just thought it was unacceptable that they could still find out things that were highly classified and criticize him at the same time. so this was just part of, he had the authority to do it and he certainly could have done it. i think, at least while i was there, john kelly felt strongly about this. we were largely successful in preventing it from happening. but i am sure it happened later, and it would certainly happen in a second term. and it stuns me that after biden came in and said he was not going to allow trump the normal courtesy of briefings for an ex -president, that they are now going to offer him briefings during the campaign. >> how many counts later?

[laughter] >>, look, i would just say they are to imposter condition -- that they ought to impose the condition that only he is in the room when they briefing. and that way, if there's a leak from the campaign, you know where that came from. >> which brings me to my next question. when you heard the news that they had executed a search warrant in mar-a-lago to recover classified documents, and then later i am sure you read the fbi affidavit and the criminal indictment, after having gone through that pre-publication circus, what did you think? >> my first thought was, if i had 320 classified documents in my house, i would be in jail by now. [laughter] >> this is not a close question. it was typical of trump. it just didn't impress him that things were classified. he is just so determined that

what belongs to him belongs to him. he obviously magnified his own trouble. if he had simply said, look, at the end of the administration, it was chaos, i didn't want to leave, we didn't make any plans to pack up. if they were classified documents, i'm sorry. we really, you know, we didn't plan this out. take them away. >> he might not even know about it. >> he would be upset at this point. no doubt about it. but that is something he is not able to do. his instinct when he sees something really interesting is to talk about it. i happened not to be present at this particular incident. but charlie huberman, my deputy then, was in the intelligence briefing in the oval office. and the intelligence community brought an overhead picture of a failed missile launch in iran. and of course, we are delighted every time their missile launches failed. that's always good news. but trump said wow, that is , really interesting. can i keep this? i would like to study it.

and i think charlie made some objection to that as much as you can when you are the presidential subordinate and the intelligence referred may have said something, but trump kept the picture, which was extremely sensitive for a lot of reasons, including markings on it that would tell people who understand what they mean, a lot. and as the story goes, the director of the cia was on the way back to her office. director of national intelligence on the way back to his office. trump tweeted it before they got back to their offices. [audible groans] so, why do you worry about giving trump intelligence briefing there? there's the reason. >> what do you think was in the book that he really didn't like? >> he didn't read the book. [laughter] he -- he just knew if i had written the book, it had to be bad. [laughter] he was right. >> fair enough.

now, for a guy who always -- was there ever a circumstance where he wasn't thinking about his own interest when considering something about was being put to him? >> well, not in any way that affected his decision. one thing that i learned was that, when you couldn't break through to him on the substance of a policy about what was the right thing to do the national security, try something else like the negative political implications for him if he made the wrong decision. that was usually pretty persuasive, if we could come up with a good political reason. often times you can't because many of these things just don't have as much of a political component as a decision on domestic policy. but he was relentless. and i have commented on his short attention span before. but i tell you, he has an infinite attention span when it comes to his own personal interests.

we saw that all the time. >> so, what is it about nato? i would think that somebody who believes in making the country strong and keeping the country strong and promoting its interests in the world, would like nato, because nato is an extension in our -- i mean, if you look at it selfishly, it is an extension of american power and influence. so if you are president of the united states, if you are thinking about being your own interest and exercising power and all the things that probably go on in donald trump's head, he would probably like nato. what was it about nato that he didn't like? >> it's an important question, and, as i said, i am worried he would withdraw from nato if he's elected. i think in part it's because he doesn't understand the point you made about what an alliance is and how collective defense

strengthens america and strengthens our allies as well. he looks at it as -- and it is not just nato, it is the alliance with japan and south korea and others, that we have agreed to defend them and they don't pay for it. he doesn't understand that because in his transactional mind -- he wouldn't mind defending them if they paid for it, i think. but he thinks they are freeloading. he acts as though what we are doing is charity and that there are better uses for the money. the whole nature of an alliance escapes him. when in fact, we are not doing it out of charity. we are not in nato because we are nice people. we are nice people, but we are in nato because it is in our self interest to be in nato. there is nothing wrong with that. there is nothing wrong with wanting to extend american power. all he knows is that all nato members agreed to spend 2% of their gdp on defense.

agreed to it in 2014. got to his administration and many of them were still behind, and he used that as a club to beat nato. many people have said in trying to explain this that, he is just bargaining, his way of doing it to get them to spend 2%. i and thousands of other american diplomats over the years have urged the europeans to spend more on defense. not entirely successfully, but we did it to strengthen nato . because we failed, number one, greater defense spending was in our mutual interest, and the more scared they had him again, the more important the alliance would be. trump uses it as a wedge to weaken nato, to get out of it. and he's got other arguments to o. the europeans screwed us on trade negotiations, that's not fair. here we are defending them. they discriminate against us on trade, it is all unacceptable. all of this has been explained to him several times. but it is never -- has never

sank in. even the part where he talks about they don't pay their dues to nato. there is a common defense budget, but it is not what they pay to nato. it is what they spend on defense. that's the issue and he doesn't understand that. >> you said that some people thought it was part of a bargaining strategy. the always struck me as are the odd things about the way people react to tramp. you said, you can't look at trump through the lens of a normal human being. people like to attribute strategy and foresight to him as though he is playing, as the phrase goes, multi-dimensional chess. is he at capable of that? >> no. the story about him when he ran the trump organization was that he wouldn't have a schedule. he would come into the office everyday and say, what's up today? maybe it makes you a real estate

billionaire -- i am not a real estate billionaire so i can't hardly resize him, but that's not the way you run the government of the united states. and the idea that he thought i had an had a grand design, i think is a mistake. he could decide one thing in the morning, change it at lunch, and change it in the afternoon. he grasped for ideas that he understood from his prior personal life to try to apply it to government that really did not work. one of my favorites is -- we are getting ready to meet kim jong-un in singapore for their first summit. i thought the idea of meeting with kim jong-un was a mistake. it had been decided like two days before i started, we were kind of stuck with it, but kim jong-un, one of his minions said something very unpleasant about

vice president pence and made a number of remarks that led some of us to think that maybe we are to cancel this thing rather than put up with that insult. and for a time, trump played with that idea. and as he explained to me, he said you know, when i was dating, i always wanted to be the first one to break up with the girl, i didn't want her to break up with me. so under that reasoning, we cancel before kim jong-un does. i took it. i took it because, even just a month or two in, i was ready to take a win on any ground. and then he changed his mind again and we went to singapore. this is the sort of thing that happened all the time. if my publisher didn't like the fact the book was 500 pages long, if i had 500 pages, i could have filled them. >> you talked about your, i guess, it was with charles

krauthammer, your discussion about his mental age. what is your opinion? >> [laughs] i wouldn't quarrel with charles, i thought it was an insightful point, but i think it reflects that trump's universe is really very small. there is kind of a bubble around him that includes his family -- that is fair -- but it doesn't really include anybody else. that is a sign of not understanding really the job of president of the united states. he felt very comfortable in the west wing because it was probably the size of the trump organization. but i took him in the first month or so, i was there and there had been a natural disaster. the residence director to the nsc had been going 24 hours a day. i took him over to thank them and to say good job.

into the old executive office building where that director was housed. i could tell he felt very uncomfortable. he couldn't wait to get back to the oval office, because he felt comfortable there. it was small enough that he could grasp it. he did like the tank at the pentagon, he thought that was cool, but he didn't look at the rest of the building. so it reflects a construction of his vision that is, i think, not just bad, it is dangerous in a president. >> are there any qualities that you see in donald trump that are desirable for president? >> well, he can be very gracious when he wants to. and i tell the story in the book, i had invited the presidents of some of the pacific island states, formerly part of an american trust in the pacific, palao, micronesia, the republic of the marshall

islands, to meet with the president. they had never met with the predecessors, since independence. given what china is trying to do in the pacific, i thought they ought to do it. so we got it on the schedule and it was approved. right before the meeting started, i went in to brief him. he looked at his schedule and people? i was ready because by then i was well trained and i had a map of these three pacific island states and a glassing overlay of the united states. their territory would include the ocean around them is roughly the size of the continental united states. up at the map of the united states on top of the three pacific island states and he said i understand. he could not have been better with those three countries. they left walking on air. it is something i see joe biden

has done too so i give him credit for that. it could have been a disaster. he did what he should have done. i was very happy it went well. he could do that when he wanted to turn it on. >> any other qualities? >> you know, i would have to think about it some more as do it eisenhower said when asked about richard nixon's contributions to the white house. >> it is time to open up for questions. where are the microphones? are there microphones people will lineup to? ok. >> you spoke about the president's effort to corrupt any compromise the professionalism of the justice department. could you give us a assessment weathered weather entered --

whether and to what extent a second term he good successfully compromise the military and through what mechanisms that could happen? >> i think the most important is going to be the decisions he makes about the civilian personnel he nominates at dod and throughout all the departments of course. what we know about the selection process people who might be willing to serve would go through. in his interview format for vice president, the first question is going to be if i told you to do on january 6 what i told mike pence to do, would you do it? if the answer is yes, you go to the next question. if the answer is no, you can go to the door. i think a lot of that is going to be reflected in how he picks people. low you say yes and do what i -- will you say yes and do what i tell you to do? he once told me right as he was

at the brussels nato summit in 2018 when we were worried he was going to withdrawal. . he was pointing to me and said i should have made keith kellogg national security advisor. keith just tells me what -- just does what i tell him to do. . he doesn't give me opinions. you're going to have civilian employees, high-level efficiency that high-level officials from the secretary on down who have come close to or met that test. when he says i'm invoking the insurrection act and i'm sending the 82nd airborne to portland, oregon, which officials are going to say yes sir or how many are going to communicate it to the chain of command to the military? what happens in the military? how many of them will say yes and how many will resign? this is -- i don't know the answer to any of that. it would depend on who the individuals are.

it will be a mark of the continuing disruption and chaos that will accompany any significant departure he tries to make from our established norms of which i'm afraid there will be quite a lot. there could be high turnover at the political level. people would say who would go into an administration. there are a lot of ambitious people in washington who are prepared to say yes. you can run through a lot and still have more ready to serve. >> i think that the anti-nato sentiment from trump but also from generally the far right and far left in the united states there is a good chance we will pull out of nato. what effect if any do you think that would have on other international organizations we are involved with like the u.n.

etc.? >> i wrote an op-ed in the wall street journal a couple weeks ago urging trump to focus his criticism on the u.n. rather than nato. nato is our most successful political military alliance. maybe one of the most successful alliances in human history. if you want to go after waste and useless expenditures, there is a whole united nations system out there that needs a cultural revolution. it is a question not all international organizations are born equal or are equal in terms of american interest. he for whatever reason trump has picked on nato and not focused on the u.n. i hope that people advising him who know it is a mistake to leave nato, who know it would be the wrong thing to do can divert his attention to something else. what you said at the beginning

of your question is quite important especially in the republican party. there is a virus of isolationism out there largely caused by trump but there is always been a strain of it. it has grown. i have to say i underestimated how bad the problem would be. i think it is something when we talk about how to get the republican party back in a post trump era which may come after november or four years from now, maintaining the view ronald reagan had of a strong american presence in the world it is necessary to preserve our economy and way of life at home should remain a fundamental conservative republican principal. that to me is worth a real struggle over four years if trump wins to prevent him from abandoning that entirely. >> so we in this room i think

and certainly our national media are obsessively attentive to donald trump. take today's airing of the god bless the usa bible hawking going on but that is capturing attention. i don't think it violates federal law to say at some point donald trump will die. he will not be here. our body politic is fractured and divided and angry with one another. is donald trump's eventual departure from the planet sufficient to solve the problem or if not, what do we need to be doing now to capture attention to solve the problem now? >> i think trump is an aberration. i don't think. there is any succession that flows from it. there is no trump philosophy. there is nothing to pass on to

others. the only thing he has has caught on is the style of attack, attack, attack. when they do focus groups of trump supporters, they ask what is it that attacks you to trump and the hard-core say he fights for us. the question then says what does he fight for for you and they say he fights for us. what that shows is deep alienation, dissatisfaction and you can understand why it is out there. people don't like being called deplorable's by the likes of hillary clinton. i don't like it. but it is not anything that is transferable. i will bet one thing for certain. donald trump will never name an heir apparent. a lot of people want to be the heir apparent but he will never name one because he doesn't want the competition. the movement, the things people do that look like he is

capturing the public -- the republican party which the liberal media loves to say he has done are a reflection in washington certainly of intimidation. the good news is a lot of people in the house of representatives don't agree with what trump says on many of these things. the bad news is they are intimidated by him. when he is not around, he is not going to be intimidating. which is why despite the doom and gloom i think we all feel with him getting the republican nomination, this battle is far from over. it is worth the fight. it is worth fighting it for four years if we have to so that we have some party and from my perspective that still believes in american national security because it is hard to find it in the democratic party today. . there is no scoop jackson. there is no joe lieberman. there is not much else in the democratic party. we have to have in world that is increasingly threatened, we have

to have advocates for a strong national security. they're only going to come from the republican party. i think they still will. >> i respectfully disagree with you. would like to ask this question to george conway. i grew up in the west. we know to kill a rattlesnake you have to cut off the head. it is an excellent question you had right before that. mr. conway, is there any one in your opinion who can step into donald trump's shoes? >> i don't think there is anyone who can step into his shoes but i don't quite paint -- not going to call your picture sunny but i don't quite paint a not so gloomy picture.

the problem is the culture that donald trump will leave behind. whether he departs from this earth tomorrow or next year or whenever, whether he wins or loses this election, we have this culture that has changed. this political culture. you refer to the attack culture. it is also a lack of civility related to that. but also a lack of the ability to tell a simple truth. that to me is very disturbing. and also the disrespect. the profound attacks. i'm sure you have something to say on this as a former head of the civil division. the attacks on the rule of law and the system of justice. >> i think donald trump is going to cause a lot of damage to the united states but i think our institutions are strong enough to survive it. the problems in american politics are not solely attributable to donald trump.

let me give you my favorite example. claire mccaskill began of spending in the republican primary to get a challenger nominated she could more easily defeat. throughout the past, the 22 cycle and in the cycle the democrats are doing that repeatedly interfering in republican primaries. it is not a legal if we were doing it to them, the liberal media would be through the roof. now they say the democrats have successfully again back to a nominee who is a trump supporter. i think that is corrosive in american politics. and yet the media don't call it out. that is not donald trump doing it. that is the democrats doing it. there are a lot of problems. trump is the biggest problem. he is not the only problem. >> there is a question up here. >> kudos to all of you for speaking out.

donald trump, his threats to american mobile leadership in the world, his threats to democracy. you have important voices and you are being listened to. but i would argue that speaking out or even saying i will not vote for that man. i will write in another conservative is not going to do it in this particular moment. another trump presidency i think would be catastrophic. my question is, are you willing to say difficult as it may be, this one time, don't become a democrat but you are going to have to vote for joe biden because it is a binary choice? liz cheney has said her life

urge everyone to vote against the republican candidate. i hope your optimism is right about the possibility of the return of the old-fashioned, the reagan republican party. my question is, would you be willing to in this one instance vote for the other guy? >> it is a fair question. the answer is no. in 2020 in the name of a conservative republican in maryland because there is not a conservative republican on the ballot. i'm not going to violate my principles by voting for joe biden who is not fit to be president anymore for different reasons than donald trump is. the manager going to graceful retirement. he has conceded to the left wing of the democratic party things that are extraordinarily detrimental to the country including the will of law if you look at his loan forgiveness executive order among other things. the fact is we are in an

unbearable situation. we have two people who are not competent to be president. i'm going to vote for somebody who is competent. if people don't want to vote for trump, vote for whoever you want. . if you want to vote for budding, that is your choice. i'm not going to do it. and we will see who wins. it is bad for the country if either one of these people gets elected. to say one is better than the other, these are incommensurable. they are unacceptable as president they don't become better because the other guy is unacceptable. >> ambassador. good to see you. there is one more thing trump is talented and that is rallying people toward violence. i have no doubt from public comment i hear on the street that a defeat of trump at the elections will cause violence. i'm not sure if we are prepared for that as a nation yet.

but also secondly, i want to let you know sir that because we stalled that retribution against iran, my fellow troops and diplomats throughout the middle east still suffer from iran being more emboldened. i just wanted to thank you for trying to get them to back up a little bit so we can continue our work. >> thank you. >> given your personal in fight on the left the administration's national security policy, i wonder what you think of the fact a recurrent international climate feels much less stable than it did during the trump administration. i'm not implying anything on this myself. what you think it accounts for? you think it is the lack of competent personnel in the current administration or the actions of the person of the last administration or a mix of both? >> i think we have an extraordinarily weak president.

i think the world sees it. i think they taking advantage of it. i am very worried about what four more years of joe biden and kamala harris are going to provide. his budget for fiscal year 25 includes a 1% increase for the pentagon which given a 3% rate of inflation is a decrease in real dollar terms at a time when we face rising threats around the world including isis-k in afghanistan which we never should have left having now in january attacked and i run and -- attacked in around in this weekend in russia. if they're not isis-k terrorist already i will be surprised and they are already on the way. trump can say none of this happened when i was president. it was not do to him. it is because circumstances did not exist that happened. i can tell you we are short in early lucky did not have a real severe international crisis. we had covid.

that was bad enough the way he performed. but in a second term in more dangerous world with a russia china axis underway with korea, syria, we are in for inner missed challenges next four years. by an is not up to it and neither is trump -- biden is not up to and neither is trump. >> ambassador, you mentioned a lot of elected republican senior republican officials don't agree with trump. maybe not only agree but maybe appalled by him but they are intimidated so they don't speak up, don't resist. is there anything that can be done about to strengthen the spine to try to overcome the

intimidation? are there any kind of a movement that could be established to give some backbone to the republicans who know better? obviously that is what we are having discussions like this about. what else can be done? you have been there. you are speaking your mind. >> i think you need a lot of effort but each person who stands up and says trump is not acceptable i think gives some degree of encouragement to the next person to stand up and say it too. a lot of people on the hill did not say anything at all. i understand the politics of that. but facing a second trump term, it is very important people understand there others who feel the same way. i think right now if you listen to the media, it is the trump republican party. he has taken it over.

he has remade it in his image. it is not true. look of the people in this room and there are plenty of others as well. if you don't say it out loud, people don't realize it. we have got to get through this election. if he wins, we have to get through four years. there is a long struggle ahead. i don't remember but i read shortly after it happened in 1960 when richard nixon sold out to nelson rockefeller in the fifth avenue compact, conservatives were discouraged and very goldwater spoke to the 1960 republican convention and he said lets grow up, conservatives. this republican party is our historic home and we can take it back and he did. and so we have got to fight the fight again. it is troubling we have to do it but what is the alternative? >> is there a future for the republican party? let's say he loses.

he has taken the party apparatus , basically decimated it or at least chopped off half of it and is requiring people to commit to saying the 2020 election was stolen in order to be rehired. he is merging it with the campaign operation. we all know what happens at the end of the campaign. we won't have a national party. we have state parties where people are battling it out. is there going to be a republican party? is it going to be something else? >> i think it has to be re-created. there are republican parties in the states that don't exist or if they have trump peopled won't . under the former chairman, the ex nbc contributor, i think the rnc had been run into the ground anyway. trump will run it further into the ground. we will have to start over again. the alternative is form a new third-party. very unlikely given these two

parties have been around for a long time. the support for the party still be there. i think we will take control of the senate in november. i think the house is a dicier proposition. the republican-controlled senate will not be perfect but it will be an anchor against they biden presidency or a trump presidency. senators elected, republican senators elected this november will have terms that expire in 2030. they are already in a post trump world. senators elected in 26 will have terms expiring in 32. trump is a lame-duck on day one. he gets lamer every day that goes on. this is a winnable battle if you -- >> a lame-duck if he agrees to leave. >> the constitution is pretty clear on that. he tried to still the election last time and he failed. he is not going to get the

constitution amendment. >> one final question i omitted from a eligible list. i asked you about trump's contempt for nato. related to that is his contempt for other democracies. at the same time, his affinity towards strongmen whether they be chinese communist party, the leader of the chinese comet is party or whether it be putin or orban or bolsonaro. what is it about him? maybe it is a psychological question. what is it about him that drills him to? these people? >> i'm not a shrink. i don't do shrink talk. he doesn't have any limits and he doesn't have any character. some people have character flaws.

trump does not have character at all. [laughter] he sees in vladimir putin and xi jinping and kim jong-un people. who. also don't have limits i think he is kind of envious. he is a big guy. he wants to do big guy things with the other big guys. that is an example of the danger we face. it is a danger we face in our domestic institutions but internationally as well. is other people who are hardman see right through trump. they think he has an easy mark he thinks he has a good relationship with them. that is not true. >> what do they think of him? >> they think he is a full. they are eager to have him as president because they would love to get him in a room alone and negotiate with him pit he doesn't understand that because he does not deal with national security concepts. he thinks if he has good relations with choosing pain, the u.s. has good relations with china. that is the farthest thing from

the truth and -- >> think xi looks at it this way? >> xi just says bring him back please. >> i want to thank you for coming to talk to us. since we are a group of lawyers and you are yourself a practicing lawyer for many years, i want to give you this hat which i think is the best trump era at i've ever seen which is the make attorneys get america hat. thank you so much. [applause]

[indiscernible conversations]

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