John Bolton doesn't really like meetings.
Perhaps that's why the national security adviser wasn't able to talk President Trump out of withdrawing troops from Syria. And perhaps that's why Trump sometimes calls Bolton by the wrong name, The New York Times reports.
Last month, Trump announced a sudden and complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, saying America had "defeated ISIS." While Bolton opposed the move, he is "at least partly responsible for the conditions that led to" it, the Times writes. Big military decisions are usually honed between the president and several security leaders, but senior administration officials say Bolton's National Security Council had "zero" role in the move.
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Because Bolton prefers one-on-one talks to group discussions, he's been blindsided by Trump's rash foreign policy choices, an official tells the Times. Bolton reportedly sees a tweet from Trump and then has to "reverse engineer" a policy to match it, the Times writes. That's what's happening regarding Syria, as Bolton rushes to convince Trump to slow down the military's withdrawal.
Bolton has so far been partly successful, with Trump conceding last week to "slowly sending our troops back home." But Bolton still hasn't broken into Trump's "inner circle," and Trump often calls him "Mike Bolton" when talking to aides, an NSC official told the Times. Read more at The New York Times.
