Trump says fired adviser Bolton 'tough' but not 'smart'

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he fired controversial national security adviser John Bolton for not being "smart," particularly in his comments seen as threatening North Korea's dictator.

In his first full account of the Tuesday sacking, Trump homed in on Bolton's strained relationship with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader whom Trump has met three times for talks on his nuclear arsenal and frequently describes as a friend.

Trump said discord between him and the hawkish adviser goes back to early 2018 when Bolton said that the denuclearization of Libya under then leader Moamer Kadhafi could be a model for North Korea.

Bolton was referring to Kadhafi's full cooperation with the international community during the 2000s. But his comment was also widely seen as threatening Kim, given that in 2011 the Libyan dictator was overthrown in a bloody NATO-backed revolution.

"That was not a good statement to make," Trump told reporters in the White House. "Just take a look at what happened with Kadhafi." "We were set back very badly when John Bolton talked about the Libyan model," he said.

"He's using that to make a deal with North Korea?" Trump said that Kim "wanted nothing to do with John Bolton" after that and "I don't blame Kim."
"That's not a question of being tough, that's a question of being not smart."