John Bolton said on Fox News Tuesday that Russia will probably take "a lot of actions" before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in to take advantage of President Barack Obama's weakness.
"I think that Russia will take a lot of actions before the 20th of January, as I think will other countries that see one last opportunity to exploit Obama's weakness," said Bolton, who's a contender to be Trump's secretary of State, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Recently the Kremlin released a statement that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump will work to fix the "unsatisfactory" relationship between the two nations, according to The Washington Post, which Bolton agreed with.
"Well, I think relations are very unsatisfactory, largely due to the behavior of Russia and the naiveté and incompetence of the Obama administration," he said. "I think we all remember that Hillary Clinton started out her tenure as secretary of State with the famous reset button, blaming what were then bad relationships between Washington and Moscow on the Bush administration, and it turned out that making one concession after another to Putin didn't make relations any better."
According to Bolton, Putin views Obama "quite correctly" as an "exceedingly weak leader."
"I think Trump is going to be the opposite. I think he's going to be a strong leader," Bolton continued. "I think that will have two dramatic impacts on Putin. Number one, it'll make him a lot more hesitant to try and extend Russian influence, and two, what may seem paradoxical but what I think is true, it'll make Putin more inclined to cooperate, because he'll believe that if he makes a deal with another strong leader, they both will stick to it."
Bolton said he would be "honored" to serve as the country's chief diplomat should Trump appoint him, but that he and the president-elect had not discussed any position in his administration.
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