John Bolton Set To Be #2 At State Department

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Andrea Mitchell reports on who will be working with Rex Tillerson at the State Department:

He will also be paired with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as his deputy secretary of state, one of the sources added, with Bolton handling day-to-day management of the department.

John Bolton? This is hardly unexpected, but holy shit. Bolton is a lunatic. Here he is on Fox News today:

Bolton is seriously suggesting that the hacks into Democratic Party computers might have been false flag operations, presumably with the goal of making it look like Russia supported Donald Trump. This would ruin Trump’s reputation and guarantee a win for Hillary Clinton.

This is completely nuts. It’s deranged. It’s unhinged. And it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. No campaign in its right mind would do this, and certainly not a campaign desperately trying to keep the word “email” in any form out of the public discourse.

Dark insinuations of false flag operations are a favorite among conspiracy theorists. They think it makes them sound sophisticated and worldly. This means that either Bolton is a conspiracy theorist or else he doesn’t mind sounding like one if that’s what it take to defend his side. And soon he’ll be the #2 guy at State, the person really running things while Tillerson provides the public face. God help us.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate