I quite agree, but with the caveat that there’s no actual mystery as to who invited them.

So we’ll have to wait and find out what this was all about. Once again, relying on the Drive-By Media for details is gonna be problematic. But we’ll eventually get to the bottom and find out what this is all about. You know, I’m gonna take a flier. I’m gonna take a wild guess. And it might have something to do with somebody inviting the Taliban to Camp David. Whoever did that needs to have their head examined.

Now, I can’t believe that Bolton would be the guy responsible for that. Bolton is the guy that has no patience — well, wrong term. He doesn’t suffer fools, and he’s not somebody that likes to accommodate the enemy. Whoever it was that came up with the idea of having these Taliban monsters up at Camp David, thank goodness that didn’t happen…

CNN is saying that Bolton was fired in part because Trump was upset that John Bolton was upset that the Taliban had been invited to Camp David. It makes perfect sense that Bolton would be upset by that.

Even if you were unfamiliar with the reporting on how the big summit with the Taliban almost happened, logic would guide you to the answer here. Process of elimination: How many doves are there in the ranks of Trump’s natsec bureaucracy, especially the highest ranks that might have influence over how negotiations with the Taliban are conducted?

Not a lot. Even Mike Pompeo, who’s seen as relatively dovish compared to John Bolton, is quite hawkish.

Now, among the very few high-ranking doves in the administration, who might have the audacity — and ignorance — to suggest bringing the g-ddamned Taliban to the United States during the week of 9/11 and hosting them at the official presidential retreat? No one, of course. It’s so outrageous and gratuitous that it wouldn’t even occur to a natsec apparatchik. Trump’s advisors doubtless recommended conducting negotiations abroad, as we’ve been doing, and then signing any eventual deal as inconspicuously as possible, knowing how bad it’ll look for the United States once the Taliban consolidates power in Afghanistan again after we’re gone.

There’s simply no reason to have them here and every reason to keep them far away. Unless you’re a person who so craves the media attention of big unprecedented peacemaker photo ops, and has so little regard for the basic civic sensitivities around an event like 9/11, that you’d be willing to invite them for that reason alone. Is there anyone like that with a high-ranking position in the administration?

I bet Rush has a guess. It’s not John Bolton, he’s certainly right about that.

By the end, Bolton had reached his limit. “Bolton was screaming about the Taliban meeting,” says a national-security expert with close ties to White House officials. Bolton thought a meeting on U.S. soil would legitimize the Taliban and considered it tone deaf to schedule the summit so close to the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The meeting was Trump’s idea, and he bristled that Bolton objected to it internally, this expert and other officials say.

I don’t want to tease him too much here since this is the harshest criticism of Trump (without actually naming Trump) that he’s uncorked in ages. Maybe Rush has reached his limit with gratuitous POTUS drama too; if so, it’ll be fascinating watching him try to criticize the president obliquely enough that his fans can’t accuse him of violating the First Commandment, that Trump Can Do No Wrong. It’s also interesting listening to Rush stick up for Bolton, at least to the extent of crediting him with the basic good sense to oppose the Taliban/Camp David idea. Bolton’s about to become an enemy of the Trump White House, notes Graeme Wood, particularly after he was treated so badly over his final months there:

Earlier this year I wrote a profile of Bolton. In my interviews with him, he sometimes prefaced a statement with “The president thinks,” or “It’s the president’s view that.” This preamble, I came to understand, most often meant that Bolton was about to say something that he personally thought was nonsense. “It’s the president’s view that he will meet with anyone, at any time,” Bolton once told me, poker-faced. Indeed, Trump was willing, until the last minute, to meet with the Taliban at Camp David, on the eve of the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He has met with Kim twice. Trump’s willingness to hold talks may or may not be wise, but there is little doubt that Bolton considers it comically naive. He would prefer that Trump line up the world’s dirtbag dictators and read them a riot act for a new century, with a guarantee of humiliation and ruin for anyone who defies America and its allies. This riot act would not mention luxury condos…

Most Trump appointees have left quietly, and have begun murmuring their discontent only after a decorous interval. Bolton’s dismissal has come after an unusually long prelude of disrespect, both by Trump and by favored allies such as Carlson. And the tweet itself must sting. Obviously it was intended to. Bolton might not observe the same period of silence. In talking to his former associates, I heard many marvel at his energy. He wakes up before dawn to plot against his adversaries. He accepts every invitation to write op-eds and go on television to ridicule those who disagree with him. Trump has, in firing Bolton, made an enemy of a man incapable of rest and letting grudges go. Tomorrow morning he will wake up, as he usually does, and start plotting. It’s 3a.m. Do you know who your ex–national security adviser’s enemies are?

It’s surreal yet true that negative hyperpartisanship in 2019 now requires the left and right to switch sides in their longstanding estimates of John Bolton, especially if he starts speaking out about Trump. To the left he’ll be the flawed but sharp hawk who at least had the good sense not to “throw a 9/11 party for the Taliban,” as the “Daily Show” put it in a tweet this afternoon. To the right he’ll be the latest quisling who couldn’t adapt to the new reality in Republican politics and took to throwing tantrums about it. What you’re about to hear may be the last warm-ish words about Bolton on the Rush Limbaugh Show for awhile.