Former White House national security adviser John Bolton reiterated Friday that he may run for president in 2024 — adding that he can beat his old boss, former President Donald Trump, to the Republican nomination because of the “terminal decline” in the 45th president’s support.
“I wouldn’t run as a vanity candidate. If I didn’t think I could run seriously then I wouldn’t get in the race,” the 74-year-old Bolton told ITV’s “Good Morning Britain.”
“I would get in to win the nomination and I would do it primarily on the basis that we need a much stronger foreign policy,” added Bolton, who has served in the previous four Republican presidential administrations.
Bolton previously mused on running for president last month, when he told NBC News that he wanted to see potential 2024 Republican candidates denounce the 76-year-old Trump’s call to override the Constitution and hold an immediate rerun of the 2020 presidential election.
“If I don’t see that, I’m going to seriously consider getting in,” Bolton said at the time, later adding: “I think to be a presidential candidate you can’t just say, ‘I support the Constitution.’ You have to say, ‘I would oppose people who would undercut it.’”
On Friday, Bolton told the British broadcaster that he specifically wants to derail Trump, who has called his onetime subordinate a “liar,” a “dope” and “a disgruntled boring fool.”
“I think Trump’s support within the party itself is in terminal decline,” Bolton said of the backlash against the former commander-in-chief.
Trump fired Bolton in September 2019 after the then-president reportedly clashed with the longtime diplomat on issues related to North Korea and Afghanistan.
Now, Bolton believes his tough-guy stance on foreign policy is what will give him the upper hand in a possible presidential race.
“I think it’s important that it’s understood not just in Moscow, but it’s understood in places like Beijing, that unprovoked aggression against your neighbors is not something the United States and its allies will tolerate,” he said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Bolton also voiced support for Liz Truss, the former UK prime minister who resigned in humiliation after serving just 44 days in office.
“I think it was very sad, very unfortunate for the United Kingdom,” he said of Truss’ exit — even supporting the economic policies Truss admitted were a mistake and are blamed for ongoing hardship across the pond.
“The policies that she and her chancellor of the exchequer were recommending seemed to me to be perfectly sensible,” Bolton stated.
Truss’ brief tenure saw soaring mortgage rates, a plummeting pound and a chaotic bond market — set into motion by her plan to abandon a 45% tax rate on high-income earners. A proposal to cap energy bills would have cost taxpayers $116 billion.
