John Bolton Is Fired. Or Did He Resign?

[0] Hello?

[1] Hey, Peter, it's Michael Barbaro.

[2] Hey, how are you?

[3] Good, good, good.

[4] I imagine I'm catching you absolutely in the thick of it.

[5] Yes.

[6] Just how in the thick of it?

[7] We're like crashing.

[8] What's going on?

[9] Okay, we saw the president's tweet about John Bolton being out as National Security Advisor, and I wonder if I could just ask you a few questions about it, or is now just not a good time?

[10] Yeah, I think it would be better not, too.

[11] Okay.

[12] Is that all right?

[13] Sorry.

[14] Yes.

[15] We'll talk a little bit.

[16] Okay, thanks.

[17] Okay, bye.

[18] From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavarro.

[19] This is the Daily.

[20] Today, Peter Baker eventually takes the call and explains what happened to John Bolton.

[21] It's Wednesday, September 11th.

[22] Peter.

[23] Hello.

[24] Hi.

[25] Hi there.

[26] How are you?

[27] What a difference a day makes.

[28] Little choice.

[29] 24 hours.

[30] It's another day in crazy town, as John Kelly would call it.

[31] Right, John Kelly.

[32] Him.

[33] So, yesterday, Peter, you were telling us that President Trump was calling off a peace deal with the Taliban, which is exactly what his national security advisor, John Bolton, was pushing for.

[34] And that felt like a John Bolton win.

[35] Now, today, Bolton has either been fired or he quit, depending on who you believe.

[36] So how do you square those two?

[37] Well, sometimes you can win a policy fight and lose the war, right?

[38] In this case, Bolton did get what he wanted in terms of ending the negotiations, at least for now, with the Taliban.

[39] But he had so worn down his relationship with the president that by less than 24 hours later, he's out of a job.

[40] Welcome to The Late Show.

[41] I'm your host Stephen Colbert.

[42] After we talked yesterday, there was a confrontation between the president and Bolton over this very topic.

[43] Donald Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David the weekend before 9 -11.

[44] That's like there's nothing that's like that.

[45] People in Vice President Mike Pence's camp were upset at Bolton because of a story.

[46] Both Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Advisor John Bolton thought it was a mistake.

[47] That had come out saying that Pence had also been against the camp David meeting with the Taliban.

[48] That was perceived by Pence's people as a way from Bolton's camp to basically enlist allies to say, hey, it wasn't just him.

[49] But according to people familiar with the talks, Trump wanted to be the dealmaker who would put the final parts together himself, or at least be perceived to be.

[50] They deeply resented that.

[51] That was blamed on Bolton, fairly or not.

[52] And so by the time the president talked with Bolton last night, feeling they were really raw.

[53] Right, because Bolton had opposed the Camp David meeting.

[54] And so the thinking is that Bolton would have been the one or people around him to get the word out that, oh, I'm not alone.

[55] Look, even the vice president opposed this meeting.

[56] Exactly.

[57] And for months, the president had been kind of bristling at what he perceived to be John Bolton's overly hawkish view of the world.

[58] John Bolton is absolutely a hawk.

[59] It's up to him.

[60] He'd take on the whole world at one time, okay?

[61] You know, he would even joke about that.

[62] I actually tempered John, which is pretty amazing, isn't it?

[63] He was the peacemaker among the two.

[64] Nobody thought that was going to have.

[65] I'm the one that tempers him, but that's okay.

[66] I have different sides.

[67] I mean, I have John Bolton, and I have other people that are a little more dovish than him.

[68] And in some ways, that was true, because Bolton didn't like a lot of this diplomacy that was going on.

[69] I didn't like dealing with the North Koreans or the Iranians.

[70] or the Taliban.

[71] He didn't trust any of them.

[72] He didn't think that the United States should get in bed with these bad actors.

[73] Yeah, here's an all -purpose insult that you can use.

[74] I'll apply it to the North Koreans' question.

[75] How do you know when the North Korean regime is lying?

[76] Answer, when their lips are moving.

[77] Whereas the president, as you know, is somebody who's looking for the big deal.

[78] He's going to make a deal with the Taliban.

[79] Maybe he'll make a deal with Iran.

[80] Again, I think Iran has tremendous economic potential.

[81] And I look forward to letting them get back to the stage where they can show that.

[82] And that was at the core of the very big differences between him and his national security advisor.

[83] So what happens this morning?

[84] Well, the morning begins actually kind of normal in the White House.

[85] There was a meeting of the national security team in the situation room.

[86] It was chaired by John Bolton, as it should normally be without the president.

[87] A couple hours later, the White House scheduled a briefing that Bolton was going to give in the White House briefing room to the press, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Treasury, Steve Mnuchin.

[88] We're going to talk about terrorism efforts.

[89] Then...