Trump Drags ‘Tough Guy’ John Bolton, Forgets Who Barron Is

“I have to run the country the way we’re running the country”, Donald Trump explained, during a characteristically farcical series of remarks to reporters on Wednesday afternoon.

The president was detailing the rationale behind the dismissal of John Bolton, whose ouster came on the heels of an Oval Office meeting during which Trump reportedly floated the idea of lifting some sanctions on Iran in order to secure a meeting with Hassan Rouhani.

Bolton claims he resigned (as opposed to being fired), but regardless of the specifics, the bottom line is that John has never seen a foreign country that wouldn’t look better after being bombed, and that didn’t line up well with Trump’s foreign policy prerogatives ahead of an election year.

Read more: Trump Floated Lifting Of Iran Sanctions, Infuriating John Bolton

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump elaborated on his relationship with Bolton.

“So, John is somebody that I actually got along with very well”, Trump began, before immediately throwing his foreign policy record under the bus.

“He made some very big mistakes”, the president said. Among those mistakes: Suggesting that Kim Jong-Un might suffer the same fate as Muammar Gaddafi.

“When he talked about ‘the Libyan model’ for Kim, that was not a good statement to make”, Trump explained, in a tacit shoutout to his good “friend” in Pyongyang. (KCNA has called Bolton a number of names over the years, including “scum” and “war maniac”.)

“And he wanted to do things – not necessarily tougher than me, you know John’s known as a tough guy, so tough he got us into Iraq”, Trump went on to muse, dragging Bolton through the mud.

“That’s tough”, he quipped, donning a sarcastic smirk, before suggesting that John might well say some negative things about the administration at a later date.

But the highlight of Trump’s remarks to reporters actually came when he weighed in on the vaping crisis, which seemingly gets worse by the day.

In the course of explaining how the issue came to his attention, Trump said it was thanks to the First Lady who, the president reminded reporters, “has a son”.