John Bolton’s Book Alleges That Donald Trump Asked Chinese President Xi Jinping For Re-Election Help

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton says he is ready to expose President Donald Trump in his upcoming book, and some interesting details have started to emerge. One passage that might raise some eyebrows explains how the president reportedly tried to get Chinese President Xi Jinping to help bolster his re-election prospects.

The Washington Post laid out the details on Wednesday, writing that it received an advanced copy of Bolton’s book, titled The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. The outlet noted that this alleged situation with Trump and Xi stood out.

Bolton wrote about a one-on-one meeting that took place between the two presidents in June 2019. They were in Japan for a summit with a number of other world leaders, and the Chinese president supposedly utilized the opportunity to complain to Trump about critics of the country within the United States.

Trump allegedly assumed that Xi was referring to Democrats. Bolton wrote that the U.S. president then told Xi there was indeed a lot of hostility toward China from United States Democrats.

The discussion shifted at that point, as Bolton reportedly pointed out.

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.”

Trump is said to have pressured Xi to have China buy more soybeans and wheat from U.S. farmers, believing that increased level of purchasing would help his own reelection efforts.

“I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise,” the former national security advisor noted.

Bolton wrote that the two men also talked about the issue involving more than 1 million Uighur Muslims in China. The Chinese government is holding people from this ethnic minority group in detention centers, and it seems that Trump noticed his approval for the strategy.

“According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do,” Bolton detailed.

These allegations about Trump’s pressure or request of Xi appear similar to the ones regarding Ukraine that eventually led to the president’s impeachment in the House.

Bolton has been talking about this book for months now, keeping things vague about the presidential misconduct he says he witnessed. Now, with the book set to be released next week, he is said to be bracing himself for a legal battle initiated by the Trump administration. As this report from The Washington Post indicates, advance copies of Bolton’s book have been distributed already, so it may be too late to keep all of the misconduct accusations under wraps.