John Bolton, a former national security adviser for the White House and a former US ambassador to the UN, admitted on Tuesday that he had assisted in the planning of failed coups in other nations.
Following the day’s congressional hearing into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Bolton made the comments. In a last-ditch effort to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election, the panel’s lawmakers on Tuesday accused former president Donald Trump of inciting the violence.
Jake Tapper, however, claimed Bolton that Trump lacked the skills necessary to pull off a “meticulously planned coup d’etat,” he continued, later stating: “As someone who has helped plan coups d’etats — not here but you know (in) other places — it takes a lot of work. And he (Trump) didn’t act in that way.”
Tapper enquired as to which attempts Bolton was making.
Bolton said, “I’m not going to get into the specifics,” before bringing up Venezuela. It didn’t work out well, as expected. Not that we had much to do with it, but I saw what it took for the opposition to attempt to unseat a president who had been chosen illegally, and they failed,” he said.
As national security adviser in 2019, Bolton publicly backed Juan Guaido’s request for the military to support his effort to depose socialist President Nicolas Maduro, asserting that Maduro’s reelection was invalid. Maduro eventually remained in charge.
“I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me (beyond Venezuela),” to which Bolton responded, “I’m sure there is.
Over the years, a number of foreign policy experts have criticised Washington’s history of foreign interventions, from its part in the 1953 overthrow of the country’s then-nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Vietnam War to its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan this century.
However, it is extremely uncommon for US government representatives to publicly acknowledge their part in fomenting unrest in other nations.
“John Bolton, who has held the highest office in the US government, including ambassador to the UN, casually brags that he has assisted in the planning of coups in other nations,
