Online searches for John Bolton’s White House memoir may have thrown up some wildly different results if ex-President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser had gotten his way.
Bolton’s 2020 account of the 17 months he served in the Trump administration ultimately ended up being titled “The Room Where It Happened.” But Bolton initially wanted to call the book “A Hard Pounding,” Simon & Schuster CEO Jon Karp revealed in a video released online Tuesday.
“For the original title for that book, Ambassador Bolton wanted to call it ‘A Hard Pounding,’ which was actually a quote from the Duke of Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo,” said Karp, whose publishing company released the autobiographical account.
The book itself alleged misdeeds by Trump. Bolton, however, drew harsh criticism for failing to speak out against the then-president during his time in the White House.
“But we told Mr. Bolton that some people might think that ‘a hard pounding’ had a sexual connotation,” Karp continued. “He told us that our minds were in the gutter, and we compromised on ‘The Room Where It Happened.’ And I think it all worked out a lot better.”
Check out the video here: