The first excerpts from John Bolton’s controversial and much-awaited book on Trump are coming out. So far, nothing seems that surprising. Trump serially committed impeachable offenses, is mocked, even by those in the White House, and knows almost nothing about the world which he oversees (“Mr. Trump did not seem to know, for example, that Britain is a nuclear power and asked if Finland is part of Russia.”). We already know this. We’ve seen it and much worse for years. Bolton’s book is titled The Room Where it Happened. What happened in that room is that self-serving, power hungry enablers like Bolton sat back and let a madman humiliate America, destroy norms, and endanger democracy—saving the urgent truth for a moment when it could impact book sales. One person should buy one copy of Bolton’s book and read it to America over Zoom.

+ WaPo: Trump asked China’s Xi to help him win reelection, according to Bolton book. (Reminder: Trump asked China for help winning the election on camera.) There are many more terrible details in the book; actions that will damage America for a very long time. All of them are perfectly believable.