A livid President Donald Trump attacked former national security adviser John Bolton early Thursday morning over his memoir, which revealed shocking details of Trump’s attempts to use his presidential power to get reelected.
“Wacko John Bolton’s ‘exceedingly tedious’ (New York Times) book is made up of lies and fake stories,” Trump tweeted shortly after midnight, referencing New York Times writer Jennifer Szalai’s review of the book.
The President called Bolton a “disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war.”
“Never had a clue, was ostracized and happily dumped,” he tweeted. “What a dope!”
Trump’s accusation that Bolton’s memoir is “made up of lies and fake stories” is at odds with his and the Justice Department’s stated reason for suing to block its publication, which is that the book contains “classified” information.
The DOJ filed an unprecedented emergency request in court on Wednesday evening for an order to bar third party sellers from releasing the book, which is set to publish on June 23.
The request came after several major news outlets that had obtained copies of Bolton’s memoir reported on its stunning revelations, including Bolton’s account of Trump asking Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him get reelected as they negotiated a trade deal between the U.S. and China.
Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Bolton’s memoir, slammed the DOJ’s move as a “frivolous, politically motivated exercise in futility.”
“Hundreds of thousands of copies of the book have already been distributed around the country and the world,” the publisher said in a statement.
