Sarah Huckabee Sanders Goes After John Bolton in Her Own Book, Says He Was "Drunk on Power"

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Former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders criticizes President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton in Speaking for Myself, her own memoir about her time working for the Trump administration. Sanders characterizes Bolton, who’s been repeatedly targeted by the president for claims he made in his own book, as “drunk on power.”

“Bolton was a classic case of a senior White House official drunk on power, who had forgotten that nobody elected him to anything,” Sanders wrote, according to an excerpt of her book obtained by Axios.

She says “Bolton apparently felt too important to travel with the rest of us,” a reference to a trip to London when Bolton’s choice to travel in a separate motorcade for the U.S. ambassador’s residence ahead of the rest of White House staff raised ire.

“As we were ready to depart for the Winfield House…[w]e waited and watched as Bolton sped by and left us in the dust. The discussion on the bus quickly moved … to how arrogant and selfish Bolton could be, not just in this moment but on a regular basis,” she wrote, recalling that former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney sparred with Bolton and called him “a f—ing self-righteous, self-centered son of a b—-.”

A spokesperson for Bolton disputed Sanders’s recollection of events.

“All logistical arrangements for travel of this sort were handled by the Secret Service, without any input from Ambassador Bolton,” the spokesperson said. “It is impossible to believe that his assigned Secret Service agents acted other than in a completely professional manner, fully coordinated with the Secret Service details assigned to Messrs. Mnuchin and Mulvaney.”

The excerpt from Sanders’s book was published the same morning President Trump slammed Bolton in a tweet this morning, claiming he gave Bolton “a chance” that had not paid off.

“I gave John Bolton, who was incapable of being Senate confirmed because he was considered a wacko, and was not liked, a chance,” he wrote. “I always like hearing differing points of view. He turned out to be grossly incompetent, and a liar,” he wrote.