In an interview with ABC News to promote his book, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton, who was Trump’s longest-serving security adviser, says that when he joined the administration he “had confidence going in that many of the stories were distorted. That turned out not to be right”.
Trump had sought to have publication of the book blocked, but a judge denied the claim.
Bolton told the ABC News chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz that Trump was not fit for office.
“I don’t think he should be president. I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job. I don’t think he’s a conservative Republican. I’m not going to vote for him in November. I’m certainly not going to vote for Joe Biden either. I’m going to figure out a conservative Republican to write in.”
Earlier on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph in the UK reported that Bolton had intended to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, quoting him as saying that he had voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, but that, “having seen this president up close, I cannot do this again. My concern is for the country, and he does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back.”
A spokesperson for Bolton told CNN that the life-long Republican would be voting for neither Biden nor Trump, saying: “This statement is incorrect. The ambassador never said he planned to vote for Joe Biden.”
Asked in the ABC interview how he thought history would remember Trump, Bolton replied: “I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can’t recall from. We can get over one term. Two terms I’m more troubled about.”
Bolton also described Trump’s chances of making a deal with North Korea as “zero”, and said Russian president Vladimir Putin felt of the US president that he could “play him like a fiddle”.
He said the US is in a “weaker position around the world. I think we have given up leadership in a wide variety of areas,” when it comes to national security.