A former White House national security aide to Barack Obama on Tuesday trashed President Donald Trump’s approach on North Korea — for relying too much on diplomacy.

Samantha Vinograd, who was director for Iraq and for international economics on the National Security Council, responded to reports that Trump had sidelined hard-line national security adviser John Bolton during preparations for this month’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“To me, it signals that we’re putting all of our eggs in a diplomatic basket … It says to the North Koreans that diplomacy is front and center, and we’re taking our foot off the gas pedal on deterrence,” she said on CNN.

Vinograd (pictured above left) called it “unprecedented” for a national security adviser not to take a leading role in a major foreign policy initiative.

“But it’s also dangerous, because it shows how thirsty Donald Trump is for this meeting to happen,” she said. “He knows that the North Koreans don’t like John Bolton. John Bolton has called for regime change.”

But Vinograd spent much of the past couple of months lambasting Trump for the opposite reason — that Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser would disrupt diplomatic efforts.

When the White House announced Bolton’s appointment March 22, Vinograd called Bolton (pictured above right) a “loud hawk” and lamented that the president did not heed the advice of the measured, outgoing national security adviser, H.R. McMaster. She argued that Bolton had the wrong approach.

“He views regime change and military action as the preferred policy tool,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Two days later, on CNN’s “Out Front,” Vinograd made a similar point.

“I just don’t know … that I like where he’s going to lead the policy process,” she told host Erin Burnett.

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In April, Vinograd wrote in a column for CNN that “the loud and hawkish views of Bolton, and his willingness to claim that intelligence is politicized, even before joining the administration, have led to some key international reactions.”

Among those reactions, according to Vinograd, was concern among key allies over the impact of diplomacy with North Korea.

“Allies Japan and South Korea are likely also wondering whether Bolton will mean that the United States will revert back to all fire and fury in place of giving all options — including diplomacy — a real shot,” she said.

Related: Here Are the Experts’ Must-Dos for Denuclearizing Korea

Never mind that Vinograd simply misstates the fact when she contends that the administration is “taking our foot off the gas pedal on deterrence.” Despite overtures to North Korea, neither the administration nor its allies have made a single change to the “maximum pressure” campaign of stiff sanctions. The administration has made no policy concessions.

And never mind the irony of an alumna from an administration that negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran that couldn’t gain majority support in the U.S. Senate.

Vinograd may soon have to explain the apparent hypocrisy of mounting a weeks-long campaign denigrating Bolton as a warmonger and warning that it could kill diplomatic efforts — only to shift on a dime and take the opposite position when the president reduces his national security adviser’s role.

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: John Bolton [1], [2], CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)