John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who now opposes the former president’s re-election, on Wednesday cited Trump’s “short attention span” to suggest that if a second term is in the cards, his new advisers could try to prevent him from withdrawing from NATO by just distracting him.
Trump’s antipathy for the post-World War II treaty organization was recently on display at a campaign stop in South Carolina in February. If he were in office again, he said, he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever they want” to NATO members who “don’t pay.”
Bolton, a foreign policy hawk who served in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, warned against the U.S. pulling out of NATO during an appearance on the MeidasTouch network. If re-elected, he said, Trump would “do it very early” in his term.