John Bolton Interview Draws 6.1 Million Viewers Sunday Night

ABC News’ exclusive prime time interview with former White House national security adviser John Bolton drew 6.1 million viewers Sunday night—an audience built on huge publicity around the interview, conducted by ABC’s Martha Raddatz. The ratings put ABC into first place in the 9 p.m. ET hour—and pushed ABC’s ratings up 56% from the same hour the previous week. It represented ABC’s best performance on a Sunday night at 9 p.m. in a year.

“I hope (history) will remember him as a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can’t recall from,” Bolton said, calling Donald Trump unfit for the presidency. “I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job.”

Bolton said he would not vote for the president in November, but contrary to some reports over the weekend, the former Trump adviser said he would not vote for presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. “I’m gonna figure out a conservative Republican to write in.”

Pressed by Raddatz on his refusal to testify during Trump’s impeachment, Bolton said “I don’t think it would have made a difference because of the way the Democrats pursued the impeachment process in the House.” Bolton called it “impeachment malpractice” and said the Democrats “were determined because of their own political objectives to conduct an impeachment proceeding that was very narrowly focused on Ukraine, and that went very, very quickly.”

Asked if Trump lied when he said he’d never told Bolton aid to Ukraine was directly tied to damaging the Biden campaign, Bolton said yes. “And it’s not the first time, either.”

Bolton himself helped to publicize the interview—and his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” tweeting out reminders Sunday:

The president has attacked Bolton with a blizzard of critical tweets—and an unsuccessful attempt to block the book’s release—but Bolton dismissed the president’s criticism as “unbecoming of the Office of the President…I think it degrades the political civil discourse in our country and (I’m) just not going to respond to him.”

ABC has tried to maximize the audience for the interview, with Bolton appearing Monday morning in a live interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Good Morning America. In that interview, Bolton said his chief concern with a second Trump term in the White House “is that his policymaking is so incoherent, so unfocused, so unstructured, so wrapped around his own personal political fortunes, that mistakes are being made that will have grave consequences for the national security of the United States.”

ABC will air portions of the interview on World News Tonight with David Muir, Nightline and on the network’s digital channels.