The ex-National Security Advisor John Bolton says in his book that President Donald Trump sought China’s Xi Jinping to help him secure the victory in the upcoming presidential election. According to the details of the forthcoming book previewed by local media, Trump wanted Beijing to buy agricultural produce from the US farmers.
In his books, Bolton also accused Trump of being “uninformed” on how to run the White House properly. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying hard to block the book from hitting the bookshelves across the US. This comes as President has signaled to resume his campaign for upcoming elections.
The book is due to go on sale on June 23. However, the Department of Justice sought an emergency order from a judge to halt the book’s release. Simon & Schuster, the publisher, said in a statement, “Tonight’s filing by the government is a frivolous, politically motivated exercise in futility.”
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It added that hundreds of thousands of copies have already been distributed across the world and said that the injunction from the administration would accomplish nothing.
While talking to a local news channel, Trump accused Bolton of breaking the law, citing that he is publishing the highly classified information without any prior approval. In April 2018, John Bolton joined the White House and left in September next year, saying that he had decided to resign from the post.
However, Donald Trump claimed that because of disagreements, he decided to fire Bolton. Allegation leveled by John Bolton in his new book refers to a meeting between Chinese President Xi and President Trump in Osaka, Japan, at the G20 summit in June last year.
According to the extract of the book published in the New York Times, Xi complained that the critics of Beijing in the US were calling for a new cold war, Bolton wrote. He added that President assumed that Xi was referring to his democratic opponents.
Bolton said, “Trump, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election [in 2020], alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,”. When the Chinese President agreed to make a discussion on agricultural products a priority in the talks, Trump called him the greatest leader in the world.
On Wednesday, Robert Lighthizer, US Trade Representative, disputed with Bolton’s account of events and said that it never happened. Bolton also mentioned an earlier conversation at the summit’s opening dinner, in which both the leaders discussed the building of camps in the Xinjiang region in western China.
According to Bolton’s account of the conversation, Trump said the construction of camps must go on as it is the step in the right direction. Beijing has detained nearly one million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the camps for indoctrination and punishment.
Publicly, the Trump administration has been very critical of the Chinese government’s handling of the minorities and Uighurs. The president has also signed legislation on Wednesday, authorizing the sanctions against officials responsible for the repression of Muslims in the Chinese province of Xingang.
Talking about the impeachment, Bolton said that it might have had a different outcome this year if the inquiry had gone beyond Ukraine and investigated other instances of political interference. However, Trump had denied all allegations against him, including withholding military aid to pressurize Ukraine into starting an investigation into his rival Joe Biden.
Among other accusations, Trump is alleged to have been unaware that Britain was a nuclear power. Bolton also writes that once the President asked his former chief-of-staff, Jon Kelly, if Finland was part of Russia.
According to the book, the American President was enthusiastic about invading Venezuela as he believes the South American country was a part of the US. Bolton reveals in his book that many of Trump’s close aides disparaged him privately.
