According to the new book from former US National Security Advisor John Bolton, President Donald Trump had prevented a top aide from meeting Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Room Where It Happened is a memoir of the former advisor’s term at the White House. It has been published on Tuesday amid rising tensions in the US.
According to the claims of the writer, Nikki Haley, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, requested for a diplomatic envoy to India in June 2018 to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama. President Trump disapproved of the request over concerns of how Beijing would react to the matter.
“The purpose of this trip was unclear, other than getting a photo op with the Dalai Lama, always good for an aspiring pol. But the minefield she strayed into by raising the China trade issue showed a political tin ear: Once Trump wondered how China would view Haley’s seeing the Dalai Lama, the trip was essentially dead,” Bolton writes in his 592-page book.
The new book has been in the news since January this year when the Senate impeachment of Donald Trump happened. In various bold claims, the revealed that Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help him win re-election, offering to reduce U.S. tariffs in exchange “for some increases in Chinese farm-product purchases, to help with the crucial farm-state vote”. He also claims that the President voiced approval for the Chinese government’s building of concentration camps for the Muslim Uyghur population.
On September 10, 2019, President Trump claimed on Twitter that he had told Bolton on September 9 his “services are no longer needed” given “many” disagreements with Trump, thus Bolton gave his resignation on September 10. Just minutes later, Bolton contradicted Trump’s account, tweeting out this claim: Bolton offered to resign on September 9, with Trump replying: “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.” Bolton later told the media Trump “never asked” for his resignation “directly or indirectly”, and that he had both offered to resign and actually resigned of his own accord. Meanwhile, the White House endorsed Trump’s version of the events, explains the former NSA’s fallout in Wikipedia.
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