Kim Jung Un has already won.
This ruthless two-bit dictator who cannot feed his own people is now the center of the world’s attention, and about to meet – not just with the president of the United States – but a desperate president of the United States.
Why desperate?
Well, there is the debacle at the G7, a disaster of his own making. In a planned attempt to make Trump look “tough,” he instead looked grossly unstable, unable to make a decision in front of the allies’ faces, waiting until on the plane before directing his staff to not sign the statement. And, a school yard smack against a thoroughly decent man, the leader of heretofore the U.S.’s closest ally, has the world laughing or sighing at Trump’s behavior.
Then there’s Mueller, the crime dog, baying at the door, with increasingly severe charges which hit increasingly close to home, and the promise of a report to be released some time this summer on the issue of obstruction of justice at a minimum. Unlike most of us, Trump knows at least something about the type of devastating stuff floating around out there.
Trump needs to do all he can to get that investigation off the front page, and yelling “hoax” will work with 30% of the people all the time, but he needs at least 12-15% more than that, and those are the ones who will be persuaded by real evidence, quite possibly of the type Mueller produces. They could also be persuaded by real evidence that the president can do the job of being president. How better demonstrate “doing the job of president” than somehow coming out of the North Korean summit with some kind of “win”?
Now, no doubt, Trump is going to claim a “win” no matter how things shake out in Singapore. The man is likely claiming a win at the G7. But, he will want something he can point to, something the average joe like me understands. That’s where this gets dangerous.
Let us not underestimate the North Koreans’ awareness of Trump’s desperation, and plan on extracting as much as they possibly can get in this meeting, knowing they’ve already won. They are on the world stage, speaking to the U.S. president. The people of North Korea are so isolated from real-world news, they do actually believe that the world is divided between two great powers, North Korea and the U.S., now Kim has the news footage to “prove” that reality. He is getting that footage despite being a murderer, and a man who, at the very moment he reaches across the table to shake the hand of the president of the United States in one of the world’s richest cities, has hundreds of thousands of his own people in tortuous concentration camps.
Kim Jung Un has already won, though we can be sure a victory declaration is in Trump’s future, within 12 hours. We should be very wary of that “victory.” After all, we live under a “dictator” (according to Fox) who sees diplomacy and democracy as “weakness.”
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