Neoconservative foreign policy advisor John Bolton is now backing down from his publicly stated intention to write in former Vice President Dick Cheney on his 2024 presidential election ballot, citing the Iraq War architect‘s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Instead, Bolton—himself a backer of the disastrous Iraq invasion under then-President George W. Bush—is suggesting he may write in Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004.
“It’s caused me to reassess whether to vote for Dick,” Bolton told CNN’s Kasie Hunt. He continued: “I’m looking to vote for a conservative Republican, and I certainly think Dick is a conservative Republican. And if he were to win—not much chance of that, I suppose—I don’t think he’d put Kamala Harris in his cabinet.”
“I had originally thought in 2020 I’d write in Ronald Reagan to make the point even more effectively, and maybe that’s what I’ll do this time,” Bolton added.
The National Pulse reported in April that Bolton had written in Dick Cheney for President of the United States in 2020 and intended to do so again in the 2024 election. However, it appears Cheney’s backing of Harris is a bridge too far for the neoconservative war hawk, who served just over a year as National Security Advisor to President Donald J. Trump before being fired for publicly undermining the Republican president’s agenda.
Botlon’s career is checkered with bizarre claims and statements that have undermined his credibility in the eyes of many Americans. During the George W. Bush administration, Bolton—then an official with the State Department—was one of the originators of the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The claim was used as a pretext for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
.@AmbJohnBolton tells me he’s reassessing his plan to write in Dick Cheney for president after Cheney endorsed Harris…now considering Ronald Reagan instead https://t.co/pLmWEPgCUk
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) October 3, 2024
