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Bolton says Trump might have pulled the U.S. out of NATO if he had been reelected

The former national security adviser said Trump came very close to leaving NATO in 2018, and Russian President Vladimir Putin “was waiting for that.”

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March 4, 2022 at 4:48 p.m. EST
National security adviser John R. Bolton and White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham listen as President Donald Trump participates in a meeting with Amir of the State of Qatar Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani on July 9, 2019, in the Oval Office at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Former national security adviser John Bolton told The Washington Post Friday that he thinks former president Donald Trump would have pulled the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had he been reelected in 2020.

Bolton, in an interview with Post opinions editor at large Michael Duffy, said the former president came close to pulling the United States out of NATO in 2018, a claim he originally made in a memoir published in 2020. In his book, Bolton wrote that he had to convince Trump not to quit NATO in the middle of a 2018 summit.