Details emerging from John Bolton’s book are damning for Donald Trump

TO JUDGE BY the way he slams his former top officials, President Donald Trump clearly needs to review his hiring policies. Earlier this month he called his first defence secretary, Jim Mattis, “the world’s most overrated general”, after Mr Mattis criticised the use of force to remove protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House. This week it is the turn of John Bolton, his former national security adviser, to come in for attack: Mr Trump called him “a washed-up guy” and “a liar” whom everyone in the White House hated. Mr Bolton has infuriated his ex-boss by writing a book full of damning details from his year-and-a-half in the Trump administration.

The book, “The Room Where It Happened”, was originally scheduled for publication in March, but the administration delayed it for a review of classified information, and it is now due for release on June 23rd. Although last-ditch legal efforts to block it (and to take away Mr Bolton’s earnings from it) continue, details of the juiciest bits from its 592 pages have been emerging in the press from advance copies, and the author has started to give interviews about it. Three main embarrassments for Mr Trump stand out.

The first is on the probity of his policy. The heart of the allegation that led the House of Representatives to impeach the president was that he sought to...