John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations and former White House national security adviser under President Donald Trump, boasted yesterday during an interview with CNN that he helped plan coup attempts in foreign countries.
Bolton made the comments following the congressional hearing on the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters. Lawmakers on the panel accused the former Republican president on Tuesday of inciting violence in a last-ditch attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
However, speaking to CNN host Jake Tapper, Bolton suggested that Trump was not competent enough to carry out a “carefully planned coup,” adding: “As someone who has helped plan coups, not here, but you know (in) other places, it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he (Trump) did.”
Tapper asked Bolton which attempts he was referring to. “I’m not going to go into details,” Bolton said, before mentioning Venezuela. “It turned out to be unsuccessful. Not that we had much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to unseat an illegally elected president and it failed,” he said.
In 2019, Bolton, as national security adviser, publicly supported Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido’s call for the military to back his effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, arguing that Maduro’s re-election was illegitimate. In the end, Maduro remained in power.
“I feel like there are other things you’re not telling me (beyond Venezuela),” the CNN host said, prompting a response from Bolton: “I’m sure there are.”
Many foreign policy experts have criticized Washington’s history of interventions in other countries over the years, from its role in the 1953 overthrow of then-nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and the Vietnam War, the military coup in Chile to its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan this century.
But it is highly unusual for US officials to openly acknowledge their role in stirring up unrest in foreign countries.
