The Washington Post seems to specialize in hiring Never Trumpers who squawk about principle, but have none. Compare Bret Stephens to Jennifer Rubin, who is now all but defending Iran, and Max Boot.

Boot’s latest slimy WaPo smear against John Bolton, is aimed at an audience with no knowledge and no sense of history, either of Bolton’s or of Boot’s.

National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn resigned in protest over Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum; now Trump is adding tariffs on China as well. Cohn is being replaced by former CNBC anchor Lawrence Kudlow… Now Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, one of the military’s brightest strategic thinkers, is out as national security adviser. He is being replaced by John Bolton, a Fox TV talking head who is likely to reinforce, rather than rein in, Trump’s worst instincts.

Reducing Bolton or Kudlow to “talking heads” because they had TV gigs is the kind of brazen dishonesty you expect from a twenty-something ex-Gawkerite who gets all its info from Wikipedia.

It’s especially ridiculous in the case of Bolton. Trying to pretend that he’s a talking head because of his FOX News appearances is as dishonest as trying to pass off Clapper as a CNN talking head.

Boot knows that. Here’s what he wrote about Bolton back when he was pretending to be a conservative.

Bolton has been an effective diplomat and bureaucratic operator precisely because he has not tried to win any popularity contests. He has fought for his beliefs, and usually prevailed. In 1991, for instance, he helped push for repeal of the U.N.’s infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. More recently, he has marshaled an impressive coalition behind the Proliferation Security Initiative designed to stop the spread of nukes. And he did it not by being polite but by being forceful and persuasive.

It’s one thing to toss out your beliefs. Another to toss out all the facts.

Boot rolls out a series of generic Dem smears at Bolton without ever mentioning that his own view at the time was quite different. But we have always been at war with Eastasia.

“When he finally went to the U.N. with a recess appointment, Bolton became notorious for making enemies and not influencing other countries,” Boot writes now. But that’s the opposite of what he wrote then.

Which Boot do we believe?

Probably neither one. Boot has conclusively demonstrated that he writes what he thinks his masters want to hear. And now, in proper Beinart style, the former neo-conservative is now churning out hysterical screeds accusing the people he formerly supported of being dangerous warmongers.