Smack hawk down: Trump fires national security adviser Bolton
US President Donald Trump has fired his hawkish national security adviser John Bolton after revealing the two had come to blows over a series of policies.
Trump said he had spoken to Bolton and asked for his resignation, which was handed in this morning.
“I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the administration, and therefore … I asked John for his resignation,” the President said on Twitter.
However Bolton, 70, hit back just minutes later by implying his resignation had not yet been handed in to Trump.
“I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow’,” Bolton tweeted.
The news, which came one day before the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York in 2001, removes a hawkish voice from the President’s ear.
It sparked speculation that US policy would soften towards countries such as Iran, which Bolton had a hard line on.
Trump once joked that “John has never seen a war he doesn’t like.”
However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed claims that US policy would change after Bolton left.
“I don’t think that any leader around the world should make any assumption that because some one of us departs that President Trump’s foreign policy will change in a material way,” he told reporters.
Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser, was picked after Trump saw him as a pundit on Fox News. The former UN ambassador replaced HR McMaster.
Trump is set to name a replacement for Bolton next week.