Take anything John Bolton says with a mountain of salt

The last thing President Trump needed during an election year on top of a raging public health catastrophe and a recession was a mouthy staffer making him look bad. But John Bolton, the brash, unapologetic uber-hawk and former national security adviser, had other ideas.

Bolton left the administration in fall 2019 after disagreeing with his boss on practically every single foreign policy issue. Trump essentially stopped listening to Bolton months prior, when the president began to wonder whether the man he picked to coordinate the national security bureaucracy was actually working on behalf of his priorities.