Excellent news: Jimmy Carter thinks Bolton as national security adviser is 'a disaster for our country'

Your job is to advise the president of the United States on threats and challenges from the world's bad actors. A man who has made a habit for nearly 40 years of locking arms with such awful people - and of giving his blessing to their murderous regimes - thinks your appointment is a disaster. That's the sort of thing you put at the top of your LinkedIn profile. It's a big day for the reputation of John Bolton

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Former president Jimmy Carter, one of the few U.S. officials who has traveled to North Korea and met with its leaders, expresses hope for the planned White House summit with Pyongyang but warns that President Trump may have made “one of the worst mistakes” of his tenure by naming John Bolton to the sensitive post of national security adviser. In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY, pegged to the publication of his new book titled Faith, Carter calls Bolton “a warlike figure” who backs policies the former president calls catastrophic. “Maybe one of the worst mistakes that President Trump has made since he’s been in office is his employment of John Bolton, who has been advocating a war with North Korea for a long time and even an attack on Iran, and who has been one of the leading figures on orchestrating the decision to invade Iraq,” Carter said. He called the appointment, announced last week, “a disaster for our country.”

The funniest news here is probably that USA Today unironically ran the story as "breaking news," as if the nation was waiting with bated breath to find out what Jimmy Carter thought about this or anything else for that matter. I've rarely felt safer than I feel right now, knowing that a man who terrified Jimmy Carter for being "warlike" has the ear of the man in the Oval Office.

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By the way, I know Jimmeh gets a little confused by these things - which is one of the reasons his own presidency actually was a disaster - but being unafraid of war is not the same thing as wanting it to happen. Bolton doesn't "advocate" war with Iran or North Korea. He advocates taking no option off the table as we seek to protect our interests abroad. Carter and other weak internationalists make it clear from the start that they are unwilling to fight, and global malefactors know that means they can push us without fearing any real consequences. If Iran had thought Carter was willing to attack, it might have been more cirumspect about taking those hostages and holding them for 444 days. But everyone knew Carter was a wimp who wouldn't try anything more aggressive than the laughable rescue mission that resulted in nothing more than dead Americans. The day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office, the hostages were released. If you need me to explain why, you probably wouldn't believe me anyway. When Carter is upset about something, his friends in Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua and the Palestinian territories are usually upset too. That's why we should be happy. A friend of America's enemies is a good gauge of what's good for America, as long as you listen to him in reverse.

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