John Bolton Says the Kremlin Will Celebrate a Trump Victory: ‘Putin Thinks He Is an Easy Mark’ | Video

John Bolton, onetime national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, had stark words for his former boss when speaking with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki about the 2024 presidential election: “I mean, if Trump is elected there will be celebrations in the Kremlin, there’s no doubt about it, because Putin thinks that he is an easy mark”

Psaki began the conversation with Bolton, also a former U.N. ambassador, discussing how Putin absorbs news from the United States. That includes both what Trump says or doesn’t say.

Bolton explained, “Well, I think [Putin] sees things moving in his direction. And he really outdid himself in terms of disinformation a couple of days ago when a reporter asked, ‘Well, what do you think of Biden versus Trump,’ and he said, ‘Well, Biden is predictable’ and so on, implying he was endorsing Biden.”

“It’s a clear disinformation effort so, to give Trump the opportunity, which he is foolish enough to take, to say, ‘Well, I thought that was actually a compliment to me,'” Bolton added. “I mean, if Trump is elected there will be celebrations in the Kremlin, there’s no doubt about it, because Putin thinks that he is an easy mark.”

The pair also discussed the combined $438 million that Trump owes in payments to E. Jean Carroll and to the state of New York. In addition to the incredible sum of money, Psaki pointed out that Trump himself could become a target of Putin’s or other foreign autocrats — especially if he has to liquidate assets.

“I mean, I think this is one of the demonstrations why Trump really is not fit for office,” Bolton said. “He is consumed by these troubles, his family is consumed by them, and I think foreigners will try to take advantage of it one way or another. They may be doing it already.”

Psaki and Bolton spoke about the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who spent more than 300 days in a brutal Russian work camp before he died on Feb. 16, 2024. Psaki noted that Trump has not said a word about Navalny’s death, a fact that prompted Bolton to comment, “Well, heaven forbid he say anything critical of Vladimir Putin.”

Bolton continued, “Look, accidents don’t happen in those kinds of Russian prison camps. When Navalny’s mother asked him, take care of the body, they refused to give it to her and they told her the cause of death was ‘sudden death syndrome.’ Well, I’d sure like to know what that is, maybe it means you’re alive one minute and dead the next. I don’t know what else it can mean.”

“But, you know, four years ago when Navalny was a victim of an attempted assassination by poisoning, other people immediately condemned what was obviously the Kremlin’s weapon of choice against its opponents: poisoning.”

“Trump didn’t comment on it, said he didn’t have information to judge. I mean, he’s only the president of the United States at that point. So it’s obviously part of the pattern. He simply doesn’t want to criticize his friend Putin because in Trump’s mind if he’s got a good relationship with Putin, the U.S. has a good relationship with Russia. This is the kind of thing that tells Putin that Trump simply doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Bolton concluded.

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