In a press conference before leaving the G-7 Summit for Singapore Donald Trump was asked how he would know if Kim Jong Un was serious about making a denuclearization deal. He replied, “You know how you can tell if you’re going to like somebody in the first five seconds? Have you heard that? I’ll know if something good is going to happen…just my touch, my feel. That’s what I do. I also think I’ll know whether it will happen fast. I think I’ll know within the first minute…and if I think it won’t happen, I’m not going to waste my time, I’m not going to waste his time.” Apparently one should approach international diplomacy blissfully, like a fey Luke Skywalker, trusting supernatural feelings, and if a successful blind date was all that was riding on the Singapore Summit, that would be just fine. But it’s not and unsurprisingly, from there things get even more ridiculous. CBS News:
Mr. Trump says this is Kim’s “one-time shot” to make North Korea “great” and reach a deal, although the president has also said he thinks it will take more than just one meeting. Mr. Trump said this summit is something that “has probably rarely been done.”
“It’s unknown territory in the truest sense,” He told reporters Saturday. “But I really feel confident I fell that Kim Jong Un wants to do something great for his people. And he has that opportunity and he won’t have that opportunity again it’s never going to be there again. So I really believe that he’s going to do something very positive for his people, for himself, his family.”
“He’s got an opportunity the likes of which I think almost — if you look into history — very few people have ever had,” Mr. Trump said. “He can take that nation with those great people and truly make it great so it’s a one-time it’s a one-time shot and I think it’s going to work out very well. That’s why I feel positive because it makes so much sense, and we will watch over and we will protect and we will do a lot of things.”
Watching over and protecting Kim Jong Un aka Little Rocket Man, giving him a chance to do something altruistic for his people, whom he terrorizes and starves and his family, members of whom he’s killed without batting an eye? Did nobody bother to mention to Trump that Kim is a psychopath? Wall Street Journal:
In 2013, he ordered the execution of his uncle, leaving little question who was in charge.
In 2017, Mr. Kim ordered his half brother and critic, Kim Jong Nam, killed with VX nerve agent in a Malaysian airport, U.S. officials say. The victim carried atropine, a possible VX antidote, suggesting he lived in fear of a foretold fate.
In five years Mr. Kim executed or purged some 340 officials, according to South Korea’s intelligence service.
To instill fear, Mr. Kim uses brutal practices such as public executions with antiaircraft guns and imprisoning three generations of a dissenter’s family, according to Greg Scarlatoiu, who runs the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.
“This is a highly paranoid regime built on an us-versus-them mentality, where the Kims truly fear their own people,” said Mr. Scarlatoiu, who grew up under Romania’s brutal dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Megawimp Trump, who can’t even stand the sight of blood, is going to outmaneuver and intimidate this guy and demand he give up his nukes, or else? Seriously? There is a reason that there are no diplomatic relations between North Korea and the United States and why we are officially still at war. Kim is the third generation of a brutal, warmongering regime and Kim is the ne plus ultra of the clan so far.
In Sept., he detonated North Korea’s most powerful nuclear device. In Nov. 2017, North Korea launched the Hwasong-15, an intercontinental missile that flew for 53 minutes with a range of 8,000 miles—enough to hit anywhere in the U.S. Though doubts remain, Mr. Kim declared he had a achieved a “state nuclear force.”
“Our Republic has at last come to possess a powerful and reliable war deterrent, which no force and nothing can reverse,” Mr. Kim said his annual January speech, wearing a business suit instead of a Mao outfit. “The nuclear button is on my office desk all the time.”
Trump is walking into “negotiations” with this guy, flanked by Sebastian Gorka, Stephen Miller, Sean Hannity, Mike Pompeo and John Kelly, all of whom, with the possible exception of Kelly are pushing a narrative of “maximum pressure” and what a tough guy Donald Trump is. Trump has gone out of his way to explain that he hasn’t bothered to prepare for the summit, elaborating, “it’s all about attitude, about a willingness to get things done.” May God help us all because he does think this is reality TV.
If you thought the G-7 Summit with our allies was a disaster, just wait a few days. Even though Trump thinks he likes dictators like Duterte and Putin, he has no idea who they really are. Donald Trump lives in an adamantine echo chamber. He only knows what he is told by his sycophants, who are a curious combination of ignorant and corrupt, as naive as they are venal. Anybody who could actually advise him, like the allies he went out of his way to insult in Canada, he shuns. Kim Jong Un is not as much of a fool as Trump. He has studied his adversary. He sees all this and he’s going to do a number on Trump, one way or another. He is not going to denuclearize and only a total fool would think that he would. But then again, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
