Tonight, with Donald Trump well-positioned to close in, we believe, on a third Republican presidential nomination, one of his former top aides is stepping up his warnings about what a second Trump term could look like. When I say former top aid, of course, there are many who have issued similar warnings about what could happen, including Trump's own vice President, Mike Pence. But this is one who had an office just steps away from the oval. John Bolton will join us live in just a moment. You'll recall his book about his time working in the Trump White House, titled The Room Where It Happened. It's out in paperback today with a new forward, The Room Where It Will Happen Again. Bolton is arguing that if Trump gets back into the White House, it will be the retribution presidency. He writes that Trump really only cares about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term. It's an echo of what we have heard repeatedly throughout Trump's campaign.

For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.

Bolton is predicting a continuing constitutional crisis in which Trump would have the authority to order his Justice Department to dismiss two of his four indictments, or, if necessary, pardon himself. He warns that if Trump did so, and after a legal battle played out, the Supreme Court invalidated his own pardon, it might still take yet another impeachment to actually remove him from office. He will not depart voluntarily this time, Bolton warns. On the foreign policy front, Bolton's message is also dire, saying that Trump's short attention span renders coherent foreign policy almost unattainable, and that his most harmful national security failure is the isolationist virus now coursing through the Republican Party. Bolton writes that it is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping, who would be the happiest to see Trump back in office. Putin will relish a second term, he writes. Trump will want to enhance his personal relationship with Xi. He adds, Imagine Trump's euphoria in resuming contact with North Korea's Kim Jong Un. All three autocratic leaders, I should note that Trump has repeatedly brought up on the 2024 campaign trail.

Kim Jong Un leads 1.4 4 billion people, and there's no doubt about who the boss is. They want me to say he's not an intelligent man. I got along with Putin. Let me tell you, I got along with him really well. That's a good thing. President Xi's like central casting. There's nobody in Hollywood that can play the role of President Shees. The look, the strength, the voice.

Overall, Bolton says this of Trump, that he's unfit to be President. If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse. Joining me tonight is John Bolton, Trump's former National Security Advisor, and the author of The Room Where It Happened, a Whitehouse memoir, which is out today with that new forward and those eye-opening details. Ambassador Bolton, it's great to have you here. As I was reading this forward, you were saying that he would cross lines that you believe would cause a constitutional crisis. You say that it essentially would end up with him not departing voluntarily this time.

Well, I think what he would do in terms of seeking retribution through the Justice Department, what he would do potentially through the Defense Department, and some of the other agencies of government as well, would produce constant constitutional agitation to the point where I think it could cause government functions almost to break down. When Other mechanisms were applied, state criminal prosecutions, the federal cases, Congressional oversight. We would be imbroiled in litigation and controversy that could make it almost impossible to get back to normality after he's gone. This is because, as I think we saw beyond question in the first term, and I tried to document in my book, he just doesn't know limits. What he cares about is the greater glory of Donald Trump. The concept of the national interest or American national security are things he doesn't comprehend. As I say, the pattern he established in the first term will continue in the second and just get worse.

What else concerns you, just given that you did work with him up close? You were in the situation room with him. You were in these briefings in the oval office. I mean, what else are you worried about?

Well, other than COVID, which was a long-term crisis, We really were fortunate in Trump's first term that we didn't have major international crises, the thing that we remember historically as very tense times in very short periods of time. We're going through that crisis, I think now in the Middle East. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made. I don't think Trump is capable of making the decisions grounded in national security. His attention span is short. He doesn't know much about world history or world affairs. He actually doesn't think they matter very much. He thinks his personal relationships with foreign leaders, especially the authoritarian ones, are all that matter. While personal relations in international affairs are important, when you get in a situation like we see in the Middle East now, they're not significant. Faced with these decisions, Trump could go one way in the morning, a different way in the afternoon. He doesn't have the ability to stay consistent for long periods of time, except on one thing, which is how he looks in the press and in public attention. That is very worrying. When you're in a crisis, you need a president who is resolute, who can keep his eyes on the prize and worry about our national security, not his own image.

Basically, you're saying that you think that he thinks these relationships that he has with Putin or with Xi Jinping or with Kim Jong Un, that they would save him when it comes to the actual policy and the dynamic of those relationships, and that you're arguing it won't. It doesn't do anything for that.

Well, I think the hard men of history, like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, understand what their job is for their respective country. I don't think Trump understands what the job of the presidency is for ours. I will say, having been in the room with him in meeting those people, having listened in on his phone conversations, I don't think they are really friendly with Donald Trump. I think they think Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and others, they think he's a laughing fool, and they're fully prepared to take advantage of him. Perhaps self-absorption makes it impossible for him to understand that.

So you think they'd be happy if he returned to the oval office?

Yeah, I think they believe he's an easy mark. Take Vladimir Putin on the situation in Ukraine. I think he'd love to get Donald Trump to do what he said on the campaign trail and try and find Ukrainian President Zelensky and Putin, get all three of them in a room together. And Trump says, I'll solve the crisis in 24 hours. That is impossible. But when you come to the end of the 24 hours, obviously, it won't be Donald Trump that failed because that doesn't happen. It must be one of the other two. I think he would point the finger at Zelensky. I think Putin would be delighted related with the outcome at that point.

I'm glad you brought up what's happening right now because we're waiting to see what President Biden has decided. He says he's made a decision of how to respond to that deadly drone attack. But I was thinking back how in your book, there was a moment where there was a plan to hit targets inside of Iran in 2019 that you say that Trump had signed off on. This was after an unmanned drone went down. Then between the time that you went home to get a change of clothes and come to be in the situation room as that happened, Trump called them off. You said you couldn't really understand why. You said it was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any president do. Are you saying you would not trust Trump to handle a crisis like the one that's happening in the Middle East right now?

No, absolutely not. I mean, among many other defects, he listens to the last person that he talks to. He looks at decisions through the prism of how they will be reported for his performance in the press, not for what the outcome is. For example, he did order the early exit of Qassim Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Kudz Force. But in listening to him talk about his views about why that was important, it was clear to me that it wasn't simply to eliminate this major figure who was the leader of Iranian terrorist actions. It was because it would be such a big event that he would get enormous credit for it. Now, every politician thinks of his position, but only Trump, I think in American history, can be said as a president who thinks only of its effect on him.