President Donald Trump said Tuesday he fired National Security Adviser John Bolton.
He suggested on Twitter that they had one too many disagreements — the most recent being whether Bolton resigned himself or if he was fired.
Trump sent out a tweet telling Bolton his “services were no longer needed.”
“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration,” Trump wrote.
“I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.”
But Bolton’s account of what happened sounds slightly different.
“I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, "Let's talk about it tomorrow."
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) September 10, 2019
Bolton’s ouster came as a surprise to many in the White House. Just an hour before Trump’s tweet, the press office announced that Bolton would join Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a briefing.
Bolton was always an unlikely pick to be Trump’s third national security adviser, with a world view seemingly ill-fit to the president’s isolationist “America First” agenda.
Bolton has espoused hawkish foreign policy views dating back to the Reagan administration and became a household name over his vociferous support for the Iraq War as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under George W. Bush. Bolton even briefly considered running for president in 2016, in part to make the case against the isolationism that Trump would come to embody.
Bolton was named Trump’s third national security adviser in April 2018 after the departure of Army Gen. H.R. McMaster.
The Associated Press contributed to this article