John Bolton: Hostile Foreign Governments Will Use Obama’s Internet Surrender to Their Advantage
Andrew Cowie/AFP/GettyImages, BNN
On Thursday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton criticized Republicans for failing to effectively oppose an Obama policy that has devastating long-term consequences: the surrender of American control over Internet registration.
Breitbart Editor-in-Chief and SiriusXM host Alex Marlow asked Bolton about the impending surrender of Internet control to a multinational body, which Bolton saluted Senator Ted Cruz and some of his colleagues for making an “heroic effort” to block by inserting legislation into the continuing resolution for federal government funding.“It didn’t happen,” Bolton said regretfully about Cruz’s efforts. “I don’t know why. I don’t know whether the Republican leadership in the Senate and the House were not receptive to it. It’s inconceivable to me, inconceivable, that we’re about to let this happen, because it is completely correct that once we let go, we are never going to get it back.”
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He warned that “hostile foreign governments out there will use it to their advantage, whatever the particular form of the transfer that’s about to take place.”
It’s only a short period of time before the whole thing is taken over by the U.N., or U.N. specialized agencies, 190 members. The Internet as we have known it is about to disappear, and I think that has national security implications. It certainly has implications for freedom of communication internationally.Bolton noted that “people on the Hill, and some others, are looking at possible legal action, I would think considering going to court and trying to get a temporary restraining order from Obama doing what a president can do, and transferring this thing.”
I understand why Barack Obama wants to take it out of the control of the United States and give it to the rest of the world. That’s consistent with the way he’s handled foreign policy for the last eight years – and, by the way, consistent with the way Hillary Clinton will handle it. What stuns me is that there wasn’t more Republican opposition.
I cannot understand it. You know, here we are in a tight election campaign, where Hillary Clinton is in deep trouble among millennials, there’s no enthusiasm for her, they’re voting for third party candidates. Here’s a chance for the party as a whole to make deep inroads into a group that spends – you know, you give me the figure of the percentage of their time they spend on the Internet that’s about to slip out of American control.
This has been one government contract that’s been handled exactly right. The Commerce Department serves as an umbrella, it basically leaves ICANN alone, and now we’re going to give it to people in the international system whose objective is not to facilitate communication over the Internet, but to restrict it. And that’s what will happen.
“I don’t know, myself, what the basis for that claim would be, but I certainly wish them good luck and creative thoughts, because once September 30 comes and goes, unless Obama completely reverses himself, I think the transfer is going to happen fairly speedily,” he predicted. “It’s been in train for a long time. That’s another thing that I don’t understand. This has been talked about for years, and it’s as though people simply weren’t paying attention.
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Marlow asked how President Obama could justify the Internet handover. Bolton anticipated he would cite his belief that “the Internet belongs to the whole world, and it’s just unfair and antiquated for the United States to control it, really.”
“It shows a complete lack of awareness of the consequences of this. I do think it’s ideologically motivated. I think Obama has long believed the United States is too strong, too powerful, too assertive, too successful, and as he said to Joe the Plumber in 2008 about ‘spreading the wealth around,’ he wants to spread the power around. This is going to be a key part of his legacy,” Bolton said.
Earlier in the interview, Bolton discussed the presidential race, noting that Hillary Clinton is walking a tricky balancing act between supporting Obama’s policies and presenting herself as a change agent.
“I think it’s entirely understandable that what Clinton will try to do is avoid criticizing Obama, because she desperately needs to recreate the Obama coalition on November the 8th,” said Bolton. “She has gone out of her way, including in her 600-page-long tedious memoir about her days at the State Department, failing to distance herself from Obama.”
This means the “default position” of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, “if there’s something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush.”
“Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well,” Bolton said. “And I think the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn’t surprise anybody. I think no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
Bolton thought Trump “did what he needed to do” at the first presidential debate:
Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don’t score it on this debating point, or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished what he needed to accomplish.Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
My critique of his performance would be that he missed opportunities. For example, you mentioned the foreign policy section, when they were asked about cyber warfare, and the dangers to the United States of hacking, and that gave Clinton a chance to give a little college-type lecture on Russia – by the way, omitting China, Iran, North Korea, and others – I thought at that point Trump could have talked about her email homebrew server for his entire time, and just drilled that point home.
But, you know, people at home aren’t sitting there grading on that basis. I think the second debate, and the third debate, will be very different, and those – particularly in the media – who now confidently predict the outcome of the election, based on their take of this debate, are smoking something.
Listen to the full audio of Bolton’s interview above.
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