John Bolton

And that serves a useful purpose because

If you can't answer the problem that they're posing, then it means you may have a problem with the underlying strategy, with substance, with timing, with all kinds of things.

Now, again, I'm not saying the NSC decision-making is perfect or that it can't be abused as a source of delay, but if a president just sits around in what they used to call a bog set,

bunch of guys sitting around talking and makes decisions on the fly, then you risk making decisions that have ramifications that nobody thought through because there was never a process to do that.

Yeah, I mean, making Marco Rubio, both Secretary of State and National Security Advisors, another piece of evidence there.

With all due respect to Marco, these are two completely separate jobs.

But what has happened, I don't blame that on anybody in the government other than Trump.

He just didn't like, he thought he was being constrained by the NSC, that somehow we were trying to, I speak for all these other cabinet members, that we were trying to force him in one direction or another.

Obviously, each member...

the NSC has his or her own views, but it's the clash of views that can benefit a president so he can see what the stronger case is, what aligns more with his preferences, what the better plan is.

All of these sorts of things, I think, are generally enhanced by discussion.

If you don't have much discussion or it's not well-informed discussion, you're not getting the benefits.

One lesson Trump derived from his first term was that he didn't like a lot of people around him with ideas about which way to go.

He wanted people who basically would say, yes, sir, when he came up with an idea.

And I think in his search for decision makers, at least in the national security space, he got what he wanted.

I'm not saying there's not discussion and disagreement between people, but I think really Trump wanted discussion about the best ways to do what he wanted to do, not really what he should do.

He thought he knew that.

He thought he'd learned that in the first term.

And I think that helps contribute to the chaotic nature of the decision-making we see now.

Well, I don't think she would have been a good president either.