People have said to me, "Well, if you ran you might get more speaking appearances, and you could sell another book." Frankly, that's the last thing o… - John Bolton

Any number of commentators have observed that the government's pre-clearance review process is riddled with constitutional deficiencies; the potential for obstruction, censorship, and abuse; and harmful to timely debate on critical public policy issues. You can add my name to the list of critics, especially when the process is in the hands of a President so averse to criticism that the idea of banning books comes to him naturally and serenely.

In an October 2019 interview, in the midst of the Ukraine impeachment crisis, Kelly said he had told Trump, "Whatever you do- and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place- I said whatever you do, don't hire a 'yes man', someone who won't tell you the truth- don't do that. Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached." Trump flatly denied Kelly had made such a statement: "John Kelly never said that, he never said anything like that. If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of the office." He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else does." And Stephanie Grisham, previously one of the First Lady's Furies, now White House press secretary, pronounced ex cathedra, "I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President." These quotes speak volumes about the people who uttered them. With Kelly's departure and Mulvaney's appointment, all effective efforts at managing the Executive Office of the President ceased. Both domestic policy strategy and political strategy, never strong suits, all but disappeared; personal decisions deteriorated further, and the general chaos spread. The crisis over Ukraine followed. There was a lot of evidence that Kelly's hypothesis was entirely correct.

Venezuela's illegitimate regime, one of the Western Hemisphere's most oppressive, presented the Trump Administration an opportunity. But it required steady determination on our part and consistent, all-out, unrelenting pressure. We failed to meet that standard. The President vacillated and wobbled, exacerbating internal Administration disagreements rather than resolving them, and repeatedly impeding our efforts to carry out a policy. We were never confident of success regarding the Venezuelan opposition's efforts to replace Nicholas Maduro, Hugo Chavez's heir. It was almost the opposite. Maduro's opponents acted in January 2019 because they felt this could be their last opportunity for freedom, after years of trying and failing. America responded because it was in our national interest to do so. It still is, and the struggle continues.