I'm against abortion as a form of birth control, and I basically hold to the Reagan position. - John Bolton

War by radical Islamist terrorists against the United States began long before 9/11 and will continue long after. You can like it or not, but it is reality. Donald Trump didn't like it, and acted like it wasn't true. He opposed "endless wars" in the Middle East but had no coherent plan for what followed withdrawing US forces and effectively abandoning key regional allies as the withdrawal unfolded. Trump liked to say, wrongly, it was all "thousands of miles away." By contrast, during my time at the White House I tried to operate in reality, with mixed success.

[A]s I followed his [candidate Barack Obama] obsession with restructuring our entire domestic way of life, it became completely clear to me that our willful ignoring of national-security policy was going to cost us...I was watching what was happening in 2008, and I thought, How can this be?

[I]t's absolutely critical that we have a more informed debate on foreign and national-security policy than we've had the last two years.[regarding first half of Obama term]