White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany Friday repeated criticism of former national security adviser John Bolton just as the two sides were facing off Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Washington.
President Donald Trump on Thursday called the Bolton’s new book, due to be released next week, as a “compilation of lies and made up stories” intended to make him look bad. He tweeted that Bolton was just trying to get even for being fired “like the sick puppy he is!”
Asked by reporters about the president’s hiring practices, when Trump himself had used terms like “dumb as a rock, overrated, wacko and incompetent.” to describe former White House employees, McEnany said the president had liked the “team of rivals” approach used by President Abraham Lincoln.
But, McEnany said, “sometimes those rivals prove those labels to be true,” adding “and that’s particularly true, that’s particularly true in the case of John Bolton, who repeatedly praised the president, then turned. ”
The government asked a federal court for a temporary restraining order to prevent the release of the book, claiming it contains classified material. But the book is already sitting in warehouses. And media outlets, including The Associated Press, have obtained advance copies and published stories on the book.
The 577-page book, titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” paints an unvarnished portrait of Trump and his administration. Bolton writes that Trump “pleaded” with China’s Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit to help his reelection prospects and that political calculations drove Trump’s foreign policy.
After working for months with the White House to edit, rewrite or remove sensitive information, Bolton’s lawyer says his client received a verbal clearance from classification expert Ellen Knight at the National Security Council. But he never got a formal clearance letter, and the Trump administration contends that the book, titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” still contains sensitive material.
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