Donald Trump lacked knowledge of basic issues, says former NSA John Bolton

Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton said in an exclusive interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz that US President Donald Trump often showed ignorance of basic issues he had to deal with as president.

Bolton's book, “The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir,” due out on Tuesday, paints an unflattering portrait of Trump's foreign policy decision-making during the turbulent year and a half that Bolton spent in the White House.

Bolton confirmed a passage in his book saying that Trump once asked former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly if Finland was a part of Russia, adding: "He said those things, absolutely. And when you're dealing with someone who asks questions like that it's very hard to know how to proceed."

He said Trump wasn't necessarily interested in learning about basic facts because it contradicted the image he hoped to portray of a decisive president who knew something about what he was doing.

Bolton said a president should extensively read the material he was given, but it wasn't clear to him that Trump "read much of anything".

Raddatz asked Bolton about an incident described in his book, where Trump issued a statement to divert attention from his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who was getting negative media coverage for the use of her private email account. Bolton said the statement in support of the US relationship with Saudi Arabia served two purposes.

"The president said that. Now, the president also strongly believed in the statement that he made about US policy vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia, despite the killing of (journalist Jamal) Khashoggi, because of the arms sales relationship and other things. But it was very much on his mind that day, that his daughter was taking some heavy hits in the press, and absolutely guaranteed this diverted everyone's attention," Bolton said.