Candidate Trump appeared on "Meet the Press" in the summer of 2015 just weeks after announcing his run for president. When Chuck Todd asked him to name his top national security advisers, the first name that rolled off his tongue was John Bolton's. Trump praised Bolton as “a tough cookie, knows what he's talking about.”

Trump’s instinctive affinity for Bolton’s bellicose style will now be a feature of daily White House decision-making. With over a year to get his sea legs, Trump is feeling his oats and remaking the administration more in his image by surrounding himself with like-minded hawks. That makeover is just in time for this pro-war team to take on important diplomatic decisions on the Iran deal and North Korea.

White House Chief of Staff John F.chief cheerleaders and architects for the Iraq war. But Bolton’s affection for regime change knows few bounds. After Bush gave his famous “Axis of Evil” speech, then Under Secretary of State Bolton one-upped his boss with a speech called “Beyond the Axis of Evil”, making sure the xenophobic vitriol was spread around. Bolton has cheered on, or been involved in, every one in the string failed U.S. interventions and asked for more: Iraq, Libya, Syria and now, heaven forbid, Iran and North Korea.

During the negotiation of the Iran deal, Bolton tried to rain on the diplomatic parade with a New York Times editorial called “To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran”. More recently, in an address to the exiled Iranian opposition group, known as the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s