Really, he’s got a great personality.
He’s a funny guy, he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator.
He loves his people, not that I’m surprised by that, but he loves his people.
And I think that we have the start of an amazing deal.
We’re going to denuke North Korea.”
— President Trump on Kim Jong Un in interview with Greta Van Susteren, here
Just a good ol’ boy, never meaning no harm: “He’s got a great personality. He’s a very funny guy.”
photo: Doug Mills, NY Times
I looked into his eyes and saw his soul.
I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.
We had a very good dialog. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.
And I appreciated so very much the frank dialog. I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.
— Then-President George W. Bush after meeting Vladimir Putin (see video here)
Trump is blowing smoke up his skirt. Like a guy at a bar who flatters you because he wants something. It is a strategy. Hide and watch…..
You could be right.
But, it seems to me that Kim (and his sharp sister) with his charm offensive already got what he so desperately wanted, and his fathers could never get, by having nuclear bombs: legitimacy on the world stage. He got legitimacy by having nuclear weapons that even Iran was years and years away from even making, much less testing and threatening the world with. And more legitimacy by having a president treat him like an old pal he saw at that bar and got loaded with.
Plus, Kim got concrete concessions from us while giving up absolutely nothing whatsoever so far, unless you count American prisoners who never should have been picked up and put to hard labor in the first place.
So I’m just not seeing our winning strategy in this chess game with a killer who is by all accounts a great chess player. I do hope against hope and pray every day that somehow these two wolves will lie down with the calves.
It did not cost us pallets of cash to let Kim indulge his ego. He did destroy a test sight and has quit flying missiles over Japan. Trump can turn war games and more back on him quickly if he tries to renege. Ask Syria. We will see what happens…..
Several probs here.
1. Those “war games” take an entire year of a massive amount of planning and coordination between three allies, us, South Korea, Japan, and others like the Brits and French. It’s not like you can flip a switch and have battleships, planes and missiles from so many places pulled out and put back in on a moment’s notice. You can’t just turn a battleship or nuke sub around to go back to where it was before without enormous planning. You don’t just drop pallets of food and fuel and supplies they need for their movements without a lot of planning.
He didn’t notify SK or Japan of this and they are livid, with all their troops and military resources left in the lurch, with nothing to show for all the planning and their $$$ as well as ours that went into the next “game.”
2. Syria??? Kim Jong-un supplies materials to Syria for their poison gas! Syria’s his number one ally and Kim is planning a meeting in North Korea with Syria’s Assad as we speak.
Syria and ISIS are still at it, by the way. There have been more poison gas attacks that didn’t get much news because Trump is great at diverting attention to what he wants attention on, like hating Canada or the FBI.
3. Those pallets of cash we gave to Iran was Iran’s cash that had been frozen, not OUR cash. That’s how negotiation works: both sides give and take.
4. He’s now asserted that NK is no longer a nuclear threat anyway. I guess that means we can cut a few billion out of defense spending and give working people a big tax cut.
But we’ll see what happens.