John Bolton wants to make foreign policy great again. And he really, really, really wants to challenge Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Welcome to 2023, y’all. This is how the new year will go. Republicans without a chance in the world of becoming the Republican nominee will begin to come out of the woodwork and tell some news outlet that they will run for president. It’s going to be 2015 all over again.In this case, John Bolton told Good Morning Britain, of all places, that he will indeed challenge Donald Trump for the GOP nomination. Bolton is 74 years od now and shouting from the rooftops that America must engage with the world. Specifically, he says he would be much tougher on Russia and China. During his time in the Trump administration as his national security adviser, Trump dubbed Bolton as Mr. Tough Guy. Like a lot of old-school Republican hawks, he talks a big game and never met a potential foreign conflict he wasn’t itching to jump right into.
He thinks Trump’s MAGA policies is in ‘terminal decline’. That’s where I think he misreads the room. Support for Trump the candidate may be waning but his policies are still very popular. He was arguably the most conservative president in my lifetime, with the exception of his tendency to approve of big spending bills, as other Republicans have done in recent years. Much of his big spending was out of his hands. The coronavirus pandemic happened and it was a very expensive national (and international) health crisis. Bolton wants to challenge isolationism.
