GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump just made a statement on foreign policy that should come as pleasant news to conservatives: he would consider former U.S. ambassador John Bolton to be his Secretary of State.
Trump appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Thursday, and Hewitt suggested that Trump could blunt the “Too Dangerous” attack used by his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by picking Bolton as his Secretary of State and Jim Talent as his Secretary of Defense. Trump scoffed at the idea at first, pointing out that if he announced his picks for State and Defense, they would be savaged by the media throughout the election.
Hewitt countered back that Bolton and Talent “would make Team Trump look massively experienced right away, and the Too Dangerous argument goes away.”
Trump seemed more open to the idea at that point.
“I think John Bolton’s a good man,” Trump said. “I watched him yesterday, actually, and he was very good in defending me in some of my views, and very, very strong. And I’ve always liked John Bolton. Well, we are thinking about it, Hugh. I will say that. We are thinking about it. I mean, the negative is what I told you. But we are seriously thinking about it.”
The real estate mogul has praised Bolton before, calling him “a tough cookie,” who “knows what he’s talking about” in August 2015 and praised him as “terrific.”
There are some clear differences in foreign policy between the two. Trump tends to be more isolationist, while Bolton has more of a Reaganesque, hawkish foreign policy. Trump has openly bragged about being consistently against the Iraq War from the start (which is not true) while Bolton has been a consistent supporter of the Iraq War. Bolton has called on Trump to rescind his remarks on how “he would not automatically rush to aid a fellow NATO member if they were attacked,” according to The Hill. Trump praised Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan for squashing the coup d’état against him, while Bolton warned of the dire consequences of Erdogan’s tightening Islamist authoritarian grip on the country and the ripple effects it will have on the Middle East.
Despite the many differences, Bolton has said that he is supporting Trump over Clinton, and the idea of him being Secretary of State has been a dream for many foreign policy hawks. Conservatives wary of Trump’s foreign policy-illiterate isolationism would be more likely to vote for Trump if he does indeed announce Bolton as his Secretary of State.