Trump handler Vladimir Putin was “automatically in better shape” than Donald Trump to negotiate over the war in Ukraine last Friday, the president’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, said Monday.

Bolton also told The Daily Beast Podcast about his experience briefing the president on another consequential summit with Putin back in 2018—and what challenges that entailed.

“Typically, he has not read the briefing materials that are prepared, really, by the National Security Council staff with inputs from all of the affected departments and agencies,” Bolton, who served under Trump in the middle of his first term, told host Joanna Coles.

“It’s pretty standard practice across almost all presidencies in the modern time, and they were laboriously put together, and I’m quite confide

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