MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th June, 2020) As the book of former US National Security Adviser John Bolton is set to be officially released next Tuesday, experts told Sputnik it might put a spoke in US President Donald Trump's wheel, albeit a small one, and solicit extra support for his key presidential race rival, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden.
Media in the United States, claiming that they have obtained a copy of the forthcoming book, titled "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," have released several excerpts or citations on several occasions over the past half a year. Most recently, New York Times published an article in which it cited Bolton as claiming that Trump's attempts to use state levers to solicit foreign assistance for his own political interests � as he allegedly did in the notorious phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that gave start to the impeachment inquiry � was of systematic nature. Bolton reportedly asserted that Trump had used trade negotiations and criminal investigations to pursue certain political decisions from the leaders of Turkey and China.
That published excerpts offer an unflattering account of Trump's conduct ahead of the presidential vote in November appeared to be of no doubt among experts Sputnik has spoken to, but the extent of the book's possible impact on the race is rather questionable, they said.
"The tone of the published excerpts aims to discredit the current president of the United States, both in matters of competences and in matters of personal interest," Tiberio Graziani, the chairman of Vision & Global Trends, International Institute for Global Analyses, told Sputnik.
According to Thomas Whalen, an Associate Professor at Social Science Department in the Boston University, the book, if consistent with the published excerpts, will demonstrate that Trump is a "thoroughly unfit and corrupt leader who is easily manipulated by other leaders on the international stage."
"This could bring back the debate about Trump's unfitting to act as president," Graziani said.
According to experts, the discourse of Trump being an "incompetent," "unqualified" and even "clueless" president who has surrounded himself with equally incompetent administration members has not been particularly shushed in the US political environment. Bolton's book comes at an ultimately right time to bring in an extra argument against Trump within the ongoing presidential race that is due to complete with the vote in November.
"This book overwhelmingly enters the campaign for the next presidential elections. It offers, without any doubt, an assist to the Democratic Party candidate, Biden," Graziani said.
The Vision & Global Trends expert and Whalen from the Boston University have agreed on that the book's key target audience in this regard would be members of Trump's own Republican Party who would prefer him out of the White House after the election.
As argued by Graziani, "since [the book] comes from a former Trump collaborator, it sends a signal to the Republican field, in particular to those sectors that, not bearing the ways and strategy of Donald Trump, would prefer a Democratic president to a second Trump presidency."
"The book certainly can't help Trump is his re-election effort. I suspect a number of independent voters and moderate Republicans � what few are left in the country � will find Mr. Bolton's revelations a good reason to abandon Trump in November," Whalen said.
Yet, according to the Boston University associate professor, the Republican team's skeleton cohort will not be affected by the book up the point of forsaking loyalty to Trump and will remain "do or die with the president."
Terry M. Moe, William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has concurred with this assertion, telling Sputnik that in the light of all that was going on in the US politics over the past two years, the impact of Bolton's book will be comparably minuscule.
"It obviously won't be a plus for Trump, but I don't think it will have much impact. There are huge forces at work � Trump's failure of leadership during the coronavirus crisis, the crash of the economy, his impeachment and lawless behavior in office, his racist appeals at a time of public concern about racism � and these other forces will overwhelm any impact of Bolton's book," Moe told Sputnik.
But while Moe expects the book to provide a "bluntly honest, accurate, and detailed" account of Bolton's experience in the White House, Graziani believes that it will fit more in the "literature of gossip and so-called conspiracy rather than in that of civil and political denunciation."
Bolton served as national security adviser in the Trump administration for 17 months since April 2018 before he was fired last September.
