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Along the way, Bolton also mentions other disconcerting( làm rối, làm hỏng, làm đảo lộn; làm chưng hửng) situations when Trump, he says, tried to ingratiate (cố gắng để giành được sự ưu ái của ai; lấy lòng ai) himself to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, by dangling (đu đưa, lủng lẳng) the possibility of removing or easing pressure (giảm áp lực) on the Turkish bank Halkbank and the Chinese telecom companies ZTE and Huawei.

Trump told Erdogan that Halkbank’s legal troubles for violating the administration’s sanctions (lệnh cấm, lệnh trừng phạt) on Iran would disappear once the “Obama people” who worked as prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were “replaced by his people,” Bolton writes, deeming it an ultimately empty promise (lời hứa suông). “It was as though Trump was trying to show he had as much arbitrary authority as Erdogan.”

Trump’s conversation with Xi, in Bolton’s telling, was even more nakedly (trần trụi, không giấu giếm) transactional. In the midst of talks about trade (thương mại), Trump “turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election (cuộc bầu cử tổng thống mỹ sắp tới), alluding (nói đến ai/cái gì một cách rút gọn hoặc gián tiếp; ám chỉ; nói bóng gió) to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

Bài trước: Hệ thống lỗi nặng rồi