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White House National Security Advisor John Bolton has dissipated his work, suggested two cabinet officials shortly after the announcement of the departure of the administrator's senior advisor.
"The president is entitled to the staff he wants," US Press Secretary Mike Pompeo told reporters on Tuesday. "This is a staff member who works directly for the President of the United States. And, [the president] should have people whom he trusts and values and whose efforts and judgments are useful for him to carry out American foreign policy.
Pompeo spoke at a press conference of a new plan "modernizing our counter-terrorism sanctions to better combat terrorists", published one day before the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Bolton was to appear at the press conference alongside Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Instead, Pompeo and Mnuchin passed the briefing to defend the ousting of Trump's third national security advisor.
"When the president makes such a decision, he has every right to do so," Pompeo said.
Bolton joined the administration last year as part of the reshuffle of the national security team that saw Pompeo leave his position as director of the CIA to replace the outgoing state secretary. Rex Tillerson. The two men were widely seen as allies in the effort to turn Trump's hostility to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal into a campaign of maximum pressure against the Tehran regime.
But Bolton's star has declined in recent months, partly because of his opposition to the Taliban peace talks led by the Pompeo team. Negotiations have put its hawkish foreign policy sensitivities in tension with Trump's long-standing desire to pull US troops out of Afghanistan. Other officials reportedly attempted to exclude Taliban talks, while the State Department's special representative, Zalmay Khalilzad, reportedly restricted Bolton's access to the Taliban. a draft agreement. Neither Pompeo nor Mnuchin would say directly whether the dispute over Afghan politics was the direct cause of Bolton's departure. Mnuchin used the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to replace the subject of Afghanistan.
"The president's view of the war in Iraq and Ambassador Bolton was very different," said Mnuchin.
Bolton is reportedly opposed to Trump's willingness to hold a Taliban and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani meeting at Camp David, which Pompeo has supported. Trump revealed the meeting by announcing that it had been canceled after an American soldier was killed by a Taliban suicide bomber on Thursday. The disruption of the peace talks – which Trump declared "dead" on Monday afternoon – could have given Bolton power, but he was in his last 24 hours of work.
The departure was messy. Trump described the decision as a shot. But Bolton, a veteran of many bureaucratic wars while he was working for four Republican presidents, quickly countered his resignation. Pompeo, who claimed that "the president has asked for the resignation of Ambassador Bolton", tried to present a chart of stability.
"Someone asked, would the policy be different in the absence of an individual here? It's the president's policy, "said Pompeo. "I do not think that a leader can assume that, because of the departure of one of us, President Trump's foreign policy will change significantly."
[[[[Read more: The ousting of Bolton stuns Congress]
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