Bolton: King of Jordan’s Actions ‘Precisely the Way a Real Leader Should Respond’

PIRRO: "Susan Rice, the one who blamed Benghazi on that despicable video, said that the nation is stronger than we've been in a very long time. Do you agree?"

BOLTON: “Well, she's on a different planet. You know, this national security strategy would be great as a sleep aid. It's filled with platitudes and it's written as if everything is fine: Russia is not a problem, terrorism is not a problem, nuclear proliferation is not a problem. It really is a cover for the administration's failures and some of the things that the administration has said in defending its strategy really boggle the mind. The idea that everything is fine -- you know, we're not in an existential threat like World War II or the Cold War. Doesn't that make you feel good that it's not the end of civilization we face? It's just incredible ...

The strategy and Susan Rice's speech were in many senses Orwellian. That's a good example because patience there means your enemies getting stronger. They talk about American leadership that Big Brother in 1984 would appreciate. It's just exactly the opposite of what's required. And there are so many examples, Iran's nuclear weapons program perhaps being the worst. It's true, we don't face an exchange of nuclear salvos with the Soviet Union, but what's the president gonna do when a terrorist gets a nuclear weapon and detonates it in, say Chicago. Is he just gonna say, 'It was just Chicago. It wasn't every American city.' I mean, it really exposes the president's thinking and for that reason alone deserves a lot of attention ...

It [the way King Abdullah responded] is precisely the way a real leadership responds. His fellow country man has been brutally murdered. He's leading his people and doing what they need to do to defend themselves. He's asked for help from his ally, the United States. One can only guess what the administration will do. He's right there on the ground. ISIS is just a few miles away and undoubtedly is infiltrated inside Jordan to a conservable extent. So when the president says there is no existential threat to the United States, he's also ignoring the fact that ISIS in particular is an existential threat to some of America's allies: Jordan, the oil producing monarchies on the peninsula, potentially Israel, potentially inside European countries. This is a blindness that's gonna lead us into trouble in much the same way that the appeasement policies of the 1930s lead to that existential threat, World War II."