18th June, 2020
It is now clear why U.S. President Donald Trump wants to use the court to stop the release of a new book by John Bolton, his former National Security Adviser.
An excerpt from the explosive book, published Wednesday by New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post said Trump pleaded with China’s leader Xi Jinping for help to win re-election in 2020.
Trump met with Xi at a summit in Osaka last June when he “stunningly turned the conversation to the US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton claims in his upcoming tell-all.
Bolton writes that Trump stressed the importance of America’s farmers and how “increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat” could impact the electoral outcome in the United States.
Bolton said the conversation turned back to the trade deal, and Trump “proposed that for the remaining $350 billion of trade imbalances (by Trump’s arithmetic), the US would not impose tariffs, but he again returned to importuning Xi to buy as many American farm products as China could.”
“He is a liar,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, adding that “everybody in the White House hated John Bolton.”
CNN also ran an excerpt of the book, titled “In the Room Where It Happened”.
It said the interactions with Xi were just some of the unflattering details about Trump contained in Bolton’s book.
Bolton also writes that Trump directly connected US security aid to Ukraine with an investigation into his presumptive 2020 opponent — the key allegation in the Democrats’ impeachment case — and accuses Trump repeatedly of lying.
The allegation that Trump asked the leader of a major US adversary to help him win the next election will reverberate across Washington six months after Trump was impeached on charges he sought help from Ukraine with his reelection bid.
Trump openly asked China to investigate his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden last year, and has refused to accept the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to try to help him win.
The claims come as the Trump campaign has tried to make China a central issue of the 2020 election, framing the President as tougher on Beijing than Biden.
The White House on Tuesday sued Bolton, seeking to block him from publishing the book, which dwells on his time as the NSA.
The White House claimed the book contains classified information and would compromise national security.