WASHINGTON: John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN and former White House national security adviser, said on Tuesday that he had helped plan attempted coups in foreign countries.
Bolton made the remarks to CNN after the day’s congressional hearing into the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. The panel’s lawmakers on Tuesday accused former President Donald Trump of inciting the violence in a last-ditch bid to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.
Speaking to CNN anchor Jake Tapper, however, Bolton suggested Trump was not competent enough to pull off a “carefully planned coup d’etat,” later adding: “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat — not here but you know (in) other places — it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he (Trump) did.”
Tapper asked Bolton which attempts he was referring to.
“I’m not going to get into the specifics,” Bolton said, before mentioning Venezuela. “It turned out not to be successful. Not that we had all that much to do with it but I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president and they failed,” he said.
In 2019, Bolton as national security adviser publicly supported Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido’s call for the military to back his effort to oust socialist President Nicolas Maduro, arguing that Maduro’s reelection was illegitimate. Ultimately Maduro remained in power. “I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me (beyond Venezuela),” the CNN anchor said, prompting a reply from Bolton: “I’m sure there is.”
Many foreign policy experts have over the years criticized Washington’s history of interventions in other countries, from its role in the 1953 overthrowing of then Iranian nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Vietnam war, to its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan this century.
But it is highly unusual for US officials to openly acknowledge their role in stoking unrest in foreign countries. “John Bolton, who’s served in highest positions in the US government, including UN ambassador, casually boasting about he’s helped plan coups in other countries,” Dickens Olewe, a BBC journalist from Kenya, tweeted.
Bolton, ex-US ambassador to UN, admits to planning attempted foreign coups
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Bolton, ex-US ambassador to UN, admits to planning attempted foreign coups
- Bolton made the remarks to CNN after the day’s congressional hearing into the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol
Trump says Cuba, a ‘failed nation,’ should make a deal with US
- The island is facing major fuel shortages and blackouts as Trump intensifies the decades-long US embargo on the country and presses other countries to stop sending Havana oil
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: President Donald Trump on Monday said Cuba was a “failed nation” and called on Havana to make a deal with the United States, though he dismissed mounting a regime change operation.
“Cuba is right now, a failed nation,” the US leader told reporters aboard Air Force One.
However, when asked if the United States would oust Cuba’s government, as Washington did when it raided Venezuela and captured president Nicolas Maduro, Trump said: “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
The island is facing major fuel shortages and blackouts as Trump intensifies the decades-long US embargo on the country and presses other countries to stop sending Havana oil.
“It’s a humanitarian threat,” Trump admitted of the fuel shortages biting the country.
