Russian President Vladimir Putin was “automatically in better shape” than Donald Trump to negotiate over the war in Ukraine last Friday, the president’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, said Monday.
Bolton also told The Daily Beast Podcast about his experience briefing the president on another consequential summit with Putin back in 2018—and what challenges that entailed.
“Typically, he has not read the briefing materials that are prepared, really, by the National Security Council staff with inputs from all of the affected departments and agencies,” Bolton, who served under Trump in the middle of his first term, told host Joanna Coles.
“It’s pretty standard practice across almost all presidencies in the modern time, and they were laboriously put together, and I’m quite confident he read little or none of them in most cases.
“We tried to arrange briefings with greater or lesser success before we departed from Washington, but sometimes that was quite difficult,” Bolton went on, citing preparations aboard Air Force One while flying from Scotland to Finland in July 2018.
“I briefed him on strategic arms issues and negotiations with Russia while we were flying on Air Force One. He was in his cabin watching a FIFA soccer match, so I had to compete for attention with that,” Bolton recalled.
The match that caught Trump’s eye that afternoon was the men’s World Cup final in Moscow between France and Croatia.
For Friday’s summit in Alaska, it was still the case that Putin is “automatically in better shape than Trump is to talk about what can be very complicated issues,” Bolton said, noting his espionage background and his several prior meetings with Trump.
“Putin engaged him very quickly, and then Trump gave him the perfect opening by inviting him to ride in the Beast, the presidential limousine, which gave him a couple minutes totally one-on-one,” he continued.
“And after that, we don’t really know... but watching the press conference afterward, I came away with a pretty firm impression that Putin felt he had had a very successful meeting and Trump came away feeling maybe it had not been so successful.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Trump met with President Zelensky and fellow European leaders on Monday for, what he called, a “very good meeting” to further discuss the Ukraine-Russia war.
“At the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday evening.
“After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself.”
When asked about what differences he sees between Trump from his first term and now, Bolton acknowledged that the 79-year-old occasionally mixes up names, but said he “wouldn’t read too much into it.”
“Sometimes he called me Michael. People thought maybe he confused me with Michael Bolton,” he said, referring to the singer-songwriter. “I think actually he was confusing me with Michael Pompeo, the Secretary of State.”
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