Trumpian Irony
The thing about the irony of this book is that it is, by definition, dependent upon the peculiar absence of any immediately apparent sense of irony in Donald Trump himself. His Presidency was marked by a curiously persistent display of statements seemingly made with completely and total conviction that half the country interpreted as sincere and heartfelt and half the country interpreted as sincere but unintentionally ironic. In speaking about the relationship between Afghan government and the Taliban leadership, for instance, he actually makes the following assertion without the least bit of ironic understanding that he could just as equally well be describing his own administration:
“I like my message. If they come at us, we’re going to destroy their whole nation. Not with nuclear weapons though. They hate us too. Taliban wants their land. We went in to take their land, and they’ve got crooks” in the highest levels of government.
Bolton’s Unintentional Irony
At the time he wrote the following, Bolton apparently had no idea they would become ironic. It is the same argument that was made by Republicans during the impeachment trial. Those very same Republican Senators who refused to convict Trump on the basis of this reasoning then revealed the ironic emptiness of their own argument by backing Trump’s baseless claims that the election was rigged and stolen. Had Joe Biden's victory not been so overwhelming and come down to cases of a few hundred votes instead of a few thousand votes, there really is no telling if the election guardrail of a seven million vote edge could have preserved his victory:
“Impeachment, of course, is, for the most part, only a theoretical guardrail constitutionally. The real guardrail is elections, which Trump faces in November 2020.”
Anyone Can Grow to Become President
This sage wisdom about the inherent equality and greatness of the American political system was never intended to be ironic. It can never be interpreted as anything but in the wake of Trump’s stumbling backwards over the Electoral College into his accidental Presidency. The more one learns about Trump’s jaw-dropping unpreparedness for the job, the more one appreciates the irony in suggesting that anyone can grow up to become America’s leader is a good thing:
“Isn’t Finland kind of a satellite of Russia?” he asked. (Later that same morning, Trump asked Kelly if Finland was part of Russia.)
It’s Not Irony if You Believe It
An infamous line from the sitcom has George Costanza advising Jerry on how to beat a lie detector by telling him that it’s not a lie if you believe it. The same apparently holds true for Trump. Assertions that could only possibly be taken as ironic if read on paper without the benefit of voice inflection, body language or eye contact apparently are actually spoken with the utmost seriousness and intent to be taken at face value. In relation to the first summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, Bolton writes:
“Trump said he had known from his first day in office that, for him, deal-making or negotiating such as this summit would be easy.”
The Empty Station
And yet, despite Trumpian Irony being exhibited on nearly every single page of the book, the award for the single most astonishing display of unintentional irony goes to Bolton himself writing about himself. In describing his role in a Trump administration densely populated by unqualified sycophants and cronies looking to cash in on their unbound obedience, calls upon a literary allusion and a historical reference at the same time, neither of which actually seems to apply to his situation in any authentic way other than ironically:
“I ended the Administration’s first hundred days secure in my own mind about what I was prepared to do and what I wasn’t. After all, as Cato the Younger says in one of George Washington’s favorite lines from his favorite play, `When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.’”
