ZadekpediaJohn Bolton is mentioned in two 2020 episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, but is not the subject of either. In both, he figures as a name invoked in passing: as a potential witness in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, and as one of the figures profiled in a former White House official’s memoir.
The impeachment trial
In a January 2020 episode, guest John Rothmann discussed the Senate trial then underway. Rothmann described the underlying conduct as the president asking the leader of a foreign nation to investigate a potential political opponent while holding up aid appropriated by Congress, and said the president broke the law in doing so. He cited Mick Mulvaney’s statement in the White House briefing room that of course it was a quid pro quo, and asked why Republicans did not want Mulvaney to testify, saying his testimony would blow the lid off their defense Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Bolton enters the conversation at that point. Rothmann said that if Bolton testifies, and that God knows what Bolton would say, it again opens up a can of worms, and that Republicans wanted the matter behind them. He predicted the trial would be over within a week and that the president would be acquitted on a party-line vote, more or less 53 to 47, with possibly a couple of Democrats in tough reelection battles voting to defend him. He characterized the whole proceeding as political rather than legal, noting that the Democrats had done the same thing with Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Bob Zadek’s framing in the same episode concerned motive. He posed a hypothetical in which Trump believed, rightly or wrongly, or was told by his advisors, that Joe Biden was sharing state secrets with Ukraine, and asked whether Trump had committed an impeachable offense. Rothmann answered that the minute Biden’s name is mentioned, the door opens to the president’s defenders going after Biden on grounds of corruption, and stressed that Biden was not on trial Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020). Bolton is not named in that exchange; he appears only in Rothmann’s discussion of witnesses.
The White House memoir
In an August 2020 episode, Casey Mulligan, described as having served as Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers for a full year between 2018 and 2019, discussed his book You’re Hired: Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President, President Donald Trump You’re Hired! Chief Economic Adviser to Trump on What It’s Really Like to Work in the White House (2020).
In his introduction, Zadek told listeners they would get first-hand views of larger-than-life figures who had been on the news almost every night, naming, besides the President, Peter Navarro, John Bolton, Bernie Sanders, Jeb Bush and many others. He later returned to the point, describing the book’s treatment of Navarro, Bolton, Bernie Sanders and Jeb Bush as wonderfully fair, and saying the description of the players in Washington was unusual for a book of its type You’re Hired! Chief Economic Adviser to Trump on What It’s Really Like to Work in the White House (2020).
Mulligan himself did not discuss Bolton in the excerpted portions. His remarks concerned his first meeting with the President, which he described as taking place in a small group in the Oval Office, without press in the room, to review the Economic Report of the President. He compared his reaction to Trump to his reaction on first seeing Barry Sanders play in person against the Chicago Bears, saying Trump’s talents were at another level, and contrasted the experience with meeting Jeb Bush on the 2016 campaign trail, which he said did not make people around him feel good You’re Hired! Chief Economic Adviser to Trump on What It’s Really Like to Work in the White House (2020).
Across episodes
The two episodes touch the topic only glancingly and in unrelated contexts — Bolton as a feared impeachment witness in January 2020, and Bolton as a name in a memoir’s cast of characters in August 2020 — and the episodes show no development of any question about him between the earlier and later treatment.