John Bolton says Trump's White House was 'like living inside a pinball machine'

If he had been a senator during President Donald Trump's impeachment trial earlier this year, John Bolton says he probably would have voted for a conviction.

There's a certain irony in that, given that Trump's former national security adviser, out Tuesday with an explosive new book about his former boss, refused to testify in the House impeachment hearings and then offered to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed; Senate Republicans predictably declined before voting to acquit.

But on that, as on most things, Bolton is unapologetic about his decisions. He is not a man given to second thoughts or particularly worried about provoking the person generally seen as the most powerful in the world, the one who went to court to try to stop publication of the book and seize his proceeds.

Witness what happened when his interview with USA TODAY on Thursday was over: Bolton stood to pose for a photograph holding a copy of "The Room Where It Happened," the memoir being published by Simon & Schuster. "Shall I hold it like this?" he asked with a broad grin, lifting it over his head.

He was unmistakably mimicking Trump's controversial photo op this month when the president held aloft a Bible in front of St. John's Church after protesters had been cleared from his way in Lafayette Square in Washington.

It is not revealing classified information to report that relations between the former national security adviser and the president he served have gotten a little rocky.

One tantalizing passage in the book suddenly seemed prescient this weekend when the Trump administration fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained in December 2018 about the office's investigation into a Turkish state-owned bank, Bolton wrote, "Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things" once he replaced Southern District prosecutors with "his people."