Former US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, admitted in a televised interview on Tuesday that he helped plan coups in other countries.
“As someone who has helped plan coups, not here but elsewhere, it takes a lot of work,” Bolton told.
Thus, he refuted the claim of the host of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, that “you don’t have to have a brilliant mind” to prepare a coup d’état. Bolton said he disagreed with the suggestion that Trump had staged a coup.
“Donald Trump doesn’t do that, the former adviser said. It’s a disjointed movement from one idea to another, one plan fails and another emerges,” he said.
According to him, Trump provoked the storming of the Capitol to give himself more time to challenge the results of the elections in the state legislatures.
Asked by the presenter to clarify what coups he was talking about, Bolton mentioned the failed coup attempt in Venezuela in 2019. At the same time, he added that the US government has no “special relationship” with this.
“The idea that Donald Trump is half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is ridiculous,” Bolton said.
Venezuelan opposition leader Guaido declared himself the country’s interim president in January 2019 and was sworn in on the street in front of thousands of supporters. After that, the United States, Canada, most Latin American countries, as well as many other countries officially recognized Guido as the interim president of Venezuela.
On January 6, 2021, the US Congress had to approve the results of the vote. On that day, scores of Trump supporters gathered in the US capital in protest. Part of the demonstrators broke into the Congress building and disrupted the meeting. Democratic congressmen immediately blamed Trump for the incident. In the case, participants received convictions, and Trump advisers were investigated or subpoenaed to testify.
Some of the summoned Trump associates refused to cooperate.
Congress later approved the election results anyway. Currently, a special committee is working in the House of Representatives whose task is to shed light on the events of January last year.
Bolton and Trump themselves have a strained relationship and exchanged sharp remarks. Bolton also published a book about his time in the White House.
