Trump should be more worried about his niece than John Bolton

Every US president has faced the same problem: disenchanted former advisers and officials and cabinet members go off in a huff and then write reveal-all memoirs to try and set the record straight as they see it. The latest one of course is John Bolton's memoir. It should have been published in March but the White House got angsty and now it's due to be published next week, but still the White House, and notably Donald Trump, are doing their best to stop it. Judging by the publicists for the publisher, the former nationalsecurity adviser is going to reveal that Trump made no decision without first worrying whether it would help him get reelected or not. Well, if that is the most exciting snippet in his memoir then I don't know what Trump is worried about. All predecessors in the Oval Office have worried about being reelected and to that extent most decisions ARE probably taken with a view to the next four-year term. That's politics, right? I don't think Trump is any different from other presidents on that score. As for the rest of the Bolton book we pretty well know what he's going to say. At least one chapter on the toing and froing over troop numbers in Afghanistan, for example. Hardly riveting stuff. I'm sure there will be little bits here and there which will raise eyebrows but anything sensational? I seriously doubt it. Yet Trump is out to stop publication, saying that it's full of highly classified material and that if the memoir is published Bolton could lay himself open to criminal charges. That's pure blather. The book has been with the manuscript expert in the White House for months and every line has been carefully gone over to make sure nothing secret is disclosed. This is why memoirs end up being so boring because there is nothing in them that surprises anyone. I've just finished reading Bob Gates's book Duty: memoir of a secretary for war. I found it fascinating because much of it was about when he was defence secretary under Obama which was when I was Pentagon Correspondent for The Times in Washington. But there wasn't a single paragraph in the huge boook that made me say out loud, "Oh my God, so that's what really happened." No secrets were revealed and the stuff I really wanted to read, such as the massive row that broke when General David Petraeus was forced to resign as director of the CIA over his relationship with his biographer and the passing of classified material to her to help her along the way, plus the real reasons why General James "Hoss" Cartwright, Obama's favourite general, was not chosen to be chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, there was zero reference. Not a dicky bird. Not even a hint of gossip. Very disappointing. So unless Bolton has come up with some very juicy stuff which has never been revealed before, I doubt his memoir will stir the pot that much. Trump should relax. He has more reason to worry about the upcoming memoir by his niece Mary Trump which supposedly paints her uncle as not the most wonderful chap!! Get your lawyers to try and stop that one, Mr President.