John Bolton
© Reuters/Michelle McLoughlinJohn Bolton
The lionization of John Bolton as an unsung hero who got fired by Trump for not allowing the president to cozy up to dictators is an embarrassment for Democrats, former Senator Mike Gravel told RT.

Bolton, who lost his job as national security advisor in the Trump administration, was instantly embraced by a number of people in the Democratic Party camp. This happened for no apparent reason other than his being rabidly hostile to countries that his former boss says he wants to be friendly with, like Russia or North Korea.

Mike Gravel, a former Democrat senator for Alaska and veteran anti-war champion, said this position is "worse than embarrassment" for the Democrats, because "Bolton was probably the most significant warmonger in recent history. Now that he is fired, it's going to limit the possibility of Donald Trump setting off a war by accident," Gravel told RT's Going Underground.


[Trump] is not a warmonger. He has got many problems, but that is not one of them.

Gravel lamented the situation in which the leadership of both major parties in the US have virtually identical stances on war and foreign policy in general.

"The only chance for us to have a decent foreign policy is for Bernie Sanders to be elected and Tulsi Gabbard to be selected as his vice president. Then we will be guaranteed to reverse the course of our desire to be an empire," he said.

Gravel dropped out of the Democratic primary race earlier this year. His campaign was not designed to win the nomination but to raise public awareness about the policies he supports by qualifying for the debates. After he dropped out, he endorsed Sanders and recommended he pick Gabbard - who is running on a rare anti-war platform, not unlike Gravel's own - as his running mate.