A former Trump adviser warned during a recent podcast interview that President Donald Trump's approach to geopolitics could put America in a situation that is "very hard to unravel."
John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, discussed Trump's approach to politics on a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast." Bolton said Trump tends to rely on his personal relationship with world leaders during negotiations, which plays into the hands of those who wish to manipulate him.
Bolton pointed to Trump's peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin as an example of Trump's approach.
“He’s barely doing this one move at a time,” Bolton said. “I think because he thinks Vladimir Putin is his friend and, in the context of Ukraine, he trusts Putin more than he trusts Zelensky, I think what you’re seeing is that Putin, going back to the first term, used his KGB training to figure out how to manipulate Trump. Other foreign leaders have figured it out too.”
“He thinks relations between states are a function of the relations between their leaders. So, for example, if he has good relations with Vladimir Putin, he thinks U.S.-Russian state-to-state relations are good,” he continued. “And how you do a deal is you size up the person on the other side of the table and you just leave facts and details and stuff like that to your subordinates, you and the other big guy just get together and make the decision.”
“Maybe that’s how it works in New York real estate, I wouldn’t know," he added. "It’s not how it works internationally. And his unwillingness to consider the consequences of his actions leads him to do things that suddenly get very hard to unravel.”