\u201cTypically, he has not read the briefing materials that are prepared, really, by the National Security Council staff with inputs from all of the affected departments and agencies,\u201d Bolton, who served under Trump in the middle of his first term, told host Joanna Coles. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty standard practice across almost all presidencies in the modern time, and they were laboriously put together, and I\u2019m quite confident he read little or none of them in most cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried to arrange briefings with greater or lesser success before we departed from Washington, but sometimes that was quite difficult,\u201d Bolton went on, citing preparations aboard Air Force One while flying from Scotland to Finland in July 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cI briefed him on strategic arms issues and negotiations with Russia while we were flying on Air Force One. He was in his cabin watching a FIFA soccer match, so I had to compete for attention with that,\u201d Bolton recalled.<\/p>\n
The match that caught Trump\u2019s eye that afternoon was the men\u2019s World Cup final in Moscow between France and Croatia.<\/p>\n
![\"Trump](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/7MOE2RH3BZCCNCQWOKAOUZEEHA.JPG\")
Trump shakes hands with Putin before a joint news conference following their meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. Gavriil Grigorov\/via REUTERS <\/p>\n
For Friday\u2019s summit in Alaska, it was still the case that Putin is \u201cautomatically in better shape than Trump is to talk about what can be very complicated issues,\u201d Bolton said, noting his espionage background and his several prior meetings with Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cPutin engaged him very quickly, and then Trump gave him the perfect opening by inviting him to ride in the Beast, the presidential limousine, which gave him a couple minutes totally one-on-one,\u201d he continued. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd after that, we don\u2019t really know… but watching the press conference afterward, I came away with a pretty firm impression that Putin felt he had had a very successful meeting and Trump came away feeling maybe it had not been so successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.<\/p>\n
Trump met with President Zelensky and fellow European leaders on Monday for, what he called, a \u201cvery good meeting\u201d to further discuss the Ukraine-Russia war.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked about what differences he sees between Trump from his first term and now, Bolton acknowledged that the 79-year-old occasionally<\/a> mixes up names<\/a>, but said he \u201cwouldn\u2019t read too much into it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes he called me Michael. People thought maybe he confused me with Michael Bolton,\u201d he said, referring to the singer-songwriter. \u201cI think actually he was confusing me with Michael Pompeo, the Secretary of State.\u201d<\/p>\n New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at beast.pub\/dailybeastpod<\/a> and subscribe on YouTube<\/a> to watch full episodes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian President Vladimir Putin was \u201cautomatically in better shape\u201d than Donald Trump to negotiate over the war in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,63802,11809,3,2190,36196,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-93994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-joanna-coles","10":"tag-john-bolton","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcast","13":"tag-samantha-bee","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}