There is a specific, uniquely American brand of hubris required for a man like John Bolton to emerge from the wreckage of his own catastrophic career and attempt to lecture the world on 'stability.' Bolton, a man whose foreign policy philosophy can be best summarized as 'if it moves, bomb it; if it doesn't move, bomb it until it does,' has once again graced the airwaves to inform us that we have reached 'Peak Trump.' It is a fascinating choice of words from a man who spent decades scaling the heights of neoconservative failure, only to find himself shouting into the void of cable news about the very man he once served with the subservience of a well-groomed golden retriever. To listen to Bolton is to endure the auditory equivalent of a dry cough in a dusty library—annoying, persistent, and ultimately signaling a lack of fresh air.

Bolton’s latest pearl of wisdom involves a stern warning to Ukraine. He is deeply concerned—as only a man who has never held a rifle can be—that Kyiv might make too many 'concessions' in peace negotiations. In Bolton’s worldview, peace is merely a temporary lapse in judgment between preferred conflicts. The idea that a nation might want to stop being a literal meat grinder for the geopolitical ambitions of Washington and Moscow is, to Bolton, a sign of weakness. He speaks of Ukraine as if it were a plastic piece on a Risk board, conveniently forgetting that the 'concessions' he fears are often measured in the blood of people who don't have book deals with Simon & Schuster. It is the classic neoconservative gambit: demand total victory from the safety of a television studio, and should the carnage continue indefinitely, simply blame the lack of 'resolve' in others.

Then we arrive at the inevitable 'Putin the Puppeteer' narrative. Bolton claims that Donald Trump is being manipulated by Vladimir Putin, a revelation that is about as shocking as discovering that water is wet or that Congress is a home for the ethically challenged. The irony, of course, is that Bolton spent seventeen months as Trump’s National Security Adviser, presumably watching this 'manipulation' happen in real-time while he adjusted his mustache in the West Wing mirrors. If Trump is indeed a puppet, Bolton was one of the men responsible for untangling the strings, yet he seems to have spent most of his tenure failing to do anything other than take meticulous notes for his eventual grievance-filled memoir. It is the hallmark of the DC grifter: participate in the circus, collect the paycheck, and then charge twenty dollars a head to tell the audience how much you hated the lead clown.

Bolton’s assertion that we are 'past Peak Trump' is a desperate attempt to frame the current political climate as a downhill slide toward sanity, but it ignores the reality that the mountain itself is made of garbage. Whether Trump is 'peaking' or 'waning' is irrelevant when the alternative offered by the establishment is a return to the sterile, calculated warmongering that Bolton represents. The Right remains a collection of reactionary ghouls who think international diplomacy is a wrestling match, while the Left continues its performative dance of 'saving democracy' by rehabilitating the reputations of people like Bolton simply because they say mean things about the Orange Man. It is a pathetic cycle of collective amnesia. Not long ago, the very people now nodding along to Bolton’s warnings were labeling him a war-mongering relic of the Bush era. Now, because he provides the correct anti-Trump soundbites, he is treated as a sage of the deep state.

This is the hopeless reality of our discourse. We are forced to choose between a narcissist who views the world as an extension of his own ego and a hawk who views the world as a series of targets for regime change. Bolton’s 'Peak Trump' comment isn't an analysis; it’s a prayer. He hopes that as Trump’s influence fluctuates, there will be a vacuum large enough for his brand of interventionist nihilism to return to the mainstream. He doesn't want peace in Ukraine; he wants a reliable theater for American munitions. He doesn't want a competent President; he wants one who will sign off on his specific list of enemies to be toppled.

Ultimately, John Bolton is the perfect avatar for the American political machine: outdated, hyper-aggressive, and utterly convinced of his own indispensability despite a track record of consistent failure. He warns us of Putin’s manipulation and Trump’s decline while failing to realize that he is just another cog in the same broken engine. We haven't reached 'Peak Trump' or 'Peak Bolton.' We have reached Peak Stupidity, a plateau where the architects of past disasters are allowed to critique the disasters of the present without a hint of self-awareness. It is a exhausting, cynical charade, and the only thing more tragic than Bolton’s continued relevance is the fact that anyone is still listening.