by JON ALLSOP
Mehdi Hasan’s challenging transatlantic rise
Last October, Mehdi Hasan, a British journalist who lives in the United States, interviewed John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, on Peacock, the NBCUniversal streaming service where Hasan had just debuted a nightly show. Bolton had been a regular news guest since the summer, when he published a book excoriating Trump; he sometimes faced awkward questions about his work for the president, but the focus of interviews was usually on Trump’s threat to America. On Peacock, Hasan asked Bolton about the prospect of Trump refusing to accept the election result, should he lose. Then the questions took a turn. Hasan pressed Bolton on his refusal to vote for Joe Biden. And he went back in time, to Bolton’s encouragement of the George W. Bush administration to invade Iraq.
“Verbal abuse is the president’s strong suit, of course,” Hasan said. “But then again, when he says in response to you and your book that you’re a, quote, ‘warmonger’—that all you, quote, ‘wanted to do is drop bombs on everybody’—is he correct about that?”
Bolton tried to deflect the question—it was “about as simplistic as Trump’s criticisms,” he said. But Hasan would not be waved off. “What I’m wondering,” he asked, “is all those thousands of people who died in Iraq, all of those innocent Iraqi civilians—men, women, children, killed by US air strikes, some of them in massacres, at Haditha, Mahmudiyah, Balad—none of those weigh on your conscience? None of those deaths ever keep you up at night?”
Bolton didn’t answer directly, so Hasan asked again, and then a third time; at one point, he also asked whether Bolton fears one day being brought to justice for war crimes. As the barrage continued, Hasan moved on to grill him about Iran. Bolton grew flustered. “I have never said anything other than what I believe,” he told Hasan, “and we are now, sir, twenty minutes into this interview, which you said was for fifteen.” (Less than fifteen minutes had gone by.)
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