Former national security advisor John Bolton claims Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 United States election.
In his scathing White House tell-all, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, Bolton claims that Trump told Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects, according to the Washington Post, who obtained a copy of the manuscript.
“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton wrote about the encounter with Xi. ”He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”
Bolton claims that the instance with Xi is not an isolated incident, but rather one of many where Trump sought approval or favors from authoritarian leaders who were more than happy to leverage a U.S. president.
“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes.
Bolton’s book paints Trump in an unfavorable light, making him out to be a reckless, out of touch president. Bolton writes that Trump once asked if Finland was part of Russia. Another time, Trump wanted Mike Pompeo to deliver an autographed copy of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” CD to Kim Jong Un during a trip to North Korea.
The book is now the subject of a legal battle between Bolton and the Justice Department. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to block its publication, citing that the book contains classified material as the reason. Bolton’s attorney disagrees with the lawsuit the outlet reports, saying that the book has gone through an extensive review process and does not contain any classified information.
