Associated Press/Charlie Neibergall
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton speaks during the Freedom Summit, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa.
- A former member of the George W. Bush administration has called John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the UN and rumored replacement for National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, a "dangerous man."
- Richard Painter said that Bolton's potential appointment to security advisor role was "an invitation to to war, perhaps nuclear war" and "must be stopped at all costs."
- Bolton is known for his hawkish views on the Iraq War and on Iran.
Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, blasted the prospect of former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton replacing General H. R. McMaster as President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor.
"John Bolton was by far the most dangerous man we had in the entire eight years of the Bush Administration," Painter tweeted on Friday. "Hiring him as the president's top national security advisor is an invitation to war, perhaps nuclear war."
Painter ended his post with a blunt and stark sentence: "this must be stopped at all costs." He also linked to an article in the Atlantic titled "Hiring John Bolton Would Be a Betrayal of Donald Trump's Base."
The Atlantic article describes Bolton as "perennially hawkish," and notes that he was a big supporter of the Iraq War in 2003 and has said that he still believes that it "was correct."
"I think decisions made after that decision were wrong, although I think the worst decision made after that was the 2011 decision to withdraw US and coalition forces," Bolton said in 2015.
"The people who say, 'Oh, things would have been much better if you didn't overthrow Saddam,' miss the point that today's Middle East does not flow totally and unchangeably from the decision to overthrow Saddam alone."
Bolton has also been very hawkish on Iran, writing an article for the National Review titled "How to Get Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal." The article was, according to Bolton, originally a gameplan for Trump that Bolton had drawn up and given to former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.