Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › Kim Jong-un outfoxed Trump
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June 12, 2018 at 10:22 am #87302
nittany ramModeratorIt sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore.
Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.
Within North Korea, the “very special bond” that Trump claimed to have formed with Kim will be portrayed this way: Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.
In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little. In a joint statement, Kim merely “reaffirmed” the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992.
“They were willing to de-nuke,” Trump crowed at his news conference after his meetings with Kim. Trump seemed to believe he had achieved some remarkable agreement, but the concessions were all his own.
ADVERTISEMENTThe most remarkable aspect of the joint statement was what it didn’t contain. There was nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programs, nothing about destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, nothing about allowing inspectors to return to nuclear sites, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear program, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification, not even any clear pledge to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.
Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this. For now Trump has much less to show than past negotiators who hammered out deals with North Korea like the 1994 Agreed Framework, which completely froze the country’s plutonium program with a rigorous monitoring system.
Trump made a big deal in his news conference about recovering the remains of American soldiers from the Korean War, but this is nothing new. Back in 1989, on my first trip to North Korea, officials there made similar pledges about returning remains, and indeed North Korea has returned some remains over the years. It’s not clear how many more remain.
Trump claimed an “excellent relationship” with Kim, and it certainly is better for the two leaders to be exchanging compliments rather than missiles. In a sense, Trump has eased the tensions that he himself created when he threatened last fall to “totally destroy” North Korea. I’m just not sure a leader should get credit for defusing a crisis that he himself created.
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There’s still plenty we don’t know and lots of uncertainty about the future. But for now, the bottom line is that there’s no indication that North Korea is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons, and Trump didn’t achieve anything remotely as good as the Iran nuclear deal, which led Iran to eliminate 98 percent of its enriched uranium.
There was also something frankly weird about an American president savaging Canada’s prime minister one day and then embracing the leader of the most totalitarian country in the world.“He’s a very talented man,” Trump said of Kim. “I also learned that he loves his country very much.”
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In an interview with Voice of America, Trump said “I like him” and added: “He’s smart, loves his people, he loves his country.”
Trump praised Kim in the news conference and, astonishingly, even adopted North Korean positions as his own, saying that the United States military exercises in the region are “provocative.” That’s a standard North Korean propaganda line. Likewise, Trump acknowledged that human rights in North Korea constituted a “rough situation,” but quickly added that “it’s rough in a lot of places, by the way.” (Note that a 2014 United Nations report stated that North Korean human rights violations do “not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”)
Incredibly, Trump told Voice of America that he had this message for the North Korean people: “I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well.”
It’s breathtaking to see an American president emerge as a spokesman for the dictator of North Korea.
ADVERTISEMENTOne can argue that my perspective is too narrow: That what counts in a broader sense is that the risk of war is much less today than it was a year ago, and North Korea has at least stopped its nuclear tests and missile tests. Fundamentally, Trump has abandoned bellicose rhetoric and instead embraced the longstanding Democratic position — that we should engage North Korea, even if the result isn’t immediate disarmament.
The 1994 Agreed Framework, for example, didn’t denuclearize North Korea or solve the human rights issues there, but it still kept the regime from adding to its plutonium arsenal for eight years. Imperfect processes can still be beneficial, and the ongoing meetings between the United States and North Korea may result in a similar framework that at least freezes the North Korean arsenal.
Of all the things that could have gone badly wrong in a Trump administration, a “bloody nose” strike on North Korea leading to a nuclear war was perhaps the most terrifying. For now at least, Trump seems to have been snookered into the same kind of deeply frustrating diplomatic process with North Korea that he has complained about, but that is far better than war.
Even so, it’s still bewildering how much Trump gave and how little he got. The cancellation of military exercises will raise questions among our allies, such as Japan, about America’s commitment to those allies.
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The Trump-Kim statement spoke vaguely about efforts “to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula,” whatever that means. But that was much less specific than the 1994 pledge to exchange diplomatic liaison offices, and the 2005 pledge to work for a peace treaty to end the Korean War.
In January 2017, Trump proclaimed in a tweet: “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!” But in fact it appears to have happened on Trump’s watch, and nothing in the Singapore summit seems to have changed that.
All this is to say that Kim Jong-un proved the more able negotiator. North Korean government officials have to limit their computer time, because of electricity shortages, and they are international pariahs — yet they are very savvy and shrewd, and they were counseled by one of the smartest Trump handlers of all, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea.
My guess is that Kim flattered Trump, as Moon has, and that Trump simply didn’t realize how little he was getting. On my most recent visit to North Korea, officials were asking me subtle questions about the differences in views of Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley; meanwhile, Trump said he didn’t need to do much homework.ADVERTISEMENT
Whatever our politics, we should all want Trump to succeed in reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and it’s good to see that Trump now supports engagement rather than military options. There will be further negotiations, and these may actually freeze plutonium production and destroy missiles. But at least in the first round, Trump seems to have been snookered.
This column has been updated to reflect news developments.
I invite you to sign up for my free, twice-weekly email newsletter. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter (@NickKJune 12, 2018 at 12:21 pm #87303
ZooeyModeratorEnh.
I see a bunch of partisans seeing what they wanted to see. Everybody is promoting a narrative. The most transparent way is through selection of photos to circulate, especially that contrast ones: “here’s a photo of this guy; here’s a photo of that guy. See the difference?”
You know, anybody can stack the deck that way.
As far as this summit goes, Trump DID get something. He got the world media to focus on him holding talks with a “rogue” state, and that promotes his image as a Go-Getter, problem-solver. The fact that many people see through that pose, notwithstanding.
North Korea got more, maybe, since it is a 4th rate nation with no international standing, and this gave them a boost in that way. But Trump really didn’t give up anything. He cancelled a set of joint exercises. BFD. Those exercises are nothing but showbiz anyway. We do everything through the air now.
In the mean time…at least people are talking instead of blustering and blowing things up. Maybe now that he got an ego boost, Rocket Man might be willing to slow down the nuclear development.
It was mostly a photo opportunity, and nothing substantial happened, but nothing bad happened, either.
June 12, 2018 at 3:33 pm #87307nittany ramModerator“As far as this summit goes, Trump DID get something.”
You Trump supporters are all the same. You make bold proclamations about all that he is accomplishing, but when pressed on specifics you can only reply with “something” or “this n’ that”.
BTW, now that you’ve been outed as a closet Trump supporter, your new board handle will be “MAGA Scaramucci Ram”.
June 12, 2018 at 4:41 pm #87309ZooeyModeratorI’m more concerned about what he did at the G7.
I mean…THAT was a clusterfuck.
This guy is an epic disaster, and I know I say this once a month, but I just cannot see any good long term outcomes here. This asshole represents forces that absolutely do not care about human rights on any level, and literally have contempt for democracy. They are slowly strangling this country to death, and it’s hard to have any hope whatsoever.
June 12, 2018 at 7:07 pm #87314
wvParticipantEnh.
I see a bunch of partisans seeing what they wanted to see..
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Thats how I looked at it too.
w
vJune 13, 2018 at 11:49 pm #87344znModeratorFox News now says criticizing Kim Jong Un amounts to criticizing Trump
With Trump lavishing praise on Kim, a host pressed Marco Rubio to “clarify” his criticism of the dictator.
link: https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-rubio-clarify-kim-jong-un-trump-f49a8ef169bc/
During a Fox News interview on Wednesday morning, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was pressed to a clarify a tweet he posted on Tuesday calling totalitarian dictator Kim Jong Un “a total weirdo who would not be elected assistant dog catcher in any democracy.”
One more thing about KJU. While I know @potus is trying to butter him up to get a good deal, #KJU is NOT a talented guy. He inherited the family business from his dad & grandfather. He is a total weirdo who would not be elected assistant dog catcher in any democracy.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) June 12, 2018
Rubio’s tweet came while President Trump is lavishing praise on the North Korean dictator as “a strong guy” with “a very good personality” who is “very strategic” and “very impressive.”
During the interview, Fox News’ Sandra Smith took her cue from Trump and pressed Rubio to “clarify” why he’s tweeting mean things about Kim.
“You’ve been tweeting a lot over the past 24 hours, and some have looked at your tweets as not only a criticism of Kim Jong Un, but some have seen them as a criticism as the president,” host Sandra Smith said. “As you just did now, you called Kim Jong Un a ‘weirdo,’ you said, ‘he’s a total weird who would be elected assistant dog catcher in any democracy.’ The president, he sits down with Sean Hannity, he’s talking about Kim Jong Un as someone who appeared to be funny, he’s smart, the president has said of him. So, could you clarify?”
Rubio responded by saying he has “nothing to clarify.”
“The president is the president of the United States. He was democratically elected by the people of this country, and in two and a half years people will have a chance to vote for him, or vote against him,” Rubio said. “Kim Jong Un’s never been elected to anything. He inherited from his father and his grandfather a dictatorship, he has murdered people, he has put people in death camps — deep suffering by the people of North Korea.”
“He has nuclear weapons, he has long-range missiles, he kills people abroad, including his own brother and others, and on top of all that, you know, this whole cult that they’ve created in their own country,” Rubio added. “Their government is a cult, it’s almost religious-like in its cult-like elements, it’s a very strange and weird place. It is what it is, and I’m not going to ignore that reality. That’s just a fact, these are not things that I’m making up, they are real.”
As the Sydney Morning Herald detailed, in North Korea, “an estimated 100,000 political prisoners are held in fetid gulag-style prisons, ‘re-education’ camps and forced-labour centers. Many are killed through torture or starved to death, according to defectors who have fled North Korea.”
More from the Herald:
In this year’s human rights report by the US State Department, North Korea stands out for the deplorable conditions described.
“Mothers were in some cases reportedly forced to watch the infanticide of their newborn infants,” the report states. Rape and other forms of torture, beatings and brutal interrogations were also common for people whose alleged crimes might have been nothing more than falling asleep at a political event or playing foreign music.
The North Korean people, the report said, also face “rigid controls over many aspects of [their] lives, including arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence, and denial of the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, religion, and movement; denial of the ability to choose their government.”
But in his comments about Kim, Trump has avoided mentioning the words “human rights,” and has instead emphasized North Korea’s potential for “commerce.”
There is no limit to what NoKo can achieve when it gives up its nuclear weapons and embraces commerce & engagement w/ the world. Chairman Kim has before him the opportunity to be remembered as the leader who ushered in a glorious new era of security & prosperity for his citizens! pic.twitter.com/Xbup4Zyz33
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018
During his interview with Trump, Hannity asked the president if humanitarian issues “came up” during his summit with Kim in Singapore. Trump immediately pivoted to ranting about the Korean War.
“That was a rough fight,” Trump said. “They were buried along the roadways, they were buried as, you know, soldiers were going back and forth into battle and they were burying them along roadways.”
During a news conference held immediately after the summit, Trump acknowledged that human rights were “discussed relatively briefly compared to denuclearization.”
June 14, 2018 at 8:41 am #87346wvParticipantI’d never seen the North Korean flag before. They only have one star.
We have fifty.
Has a country with one star ever beaten a country with fifty stars?
w
vJune 14, 2018 at 10:01 am #87348ZooeyModeratorI’d never seen the North Korean flag before. They only have one star.
We have fifty.
Has a country with one star ever beaten a country with fifty stars?
w
vHappens a lot in soccer, I understand.
June 14, 2018 at 10:05 am #87349ZooeyModeratorRubio is clearly running in 2020.
This is the second issue on which he has stood up in contrast to Trump. I can’t remember the first one, but it was a month or so ago. Was it the tariffs? I don’t remember. But he is the only Republican right now making public stands in contrast to Trump. He isn’t fighting Trump, or doing anything legislatively, but he is staking positions. Trump will definitely get a primary battle, and Rubio is already in the ring.
BTW, I really hate the fact that all the talk is still about N Korea when that was a big nothing, and the G7 was highly significant, and that’s been completely buried in the news cycle. And liberals are responsible for that. They keep talking about Korea.
June 14, 2018 at 11:33 am #87352wvParticipantRubio is clearly running in 2020.
This is the second issue on which he has stood up in contrast to Trump. I can’t remember the first one, but it was a month or so ago. Was it the tariffs? I don’t remember. But he is the only Republican right now making public stands in contrast to Trump. He isn’t fighting Trump, or doing anything legislatively, but he is staking positions. Trump will definitely get a primary battle, and Rubio is already in the ring.
BTW, I really hate the fact that all the talk is still about N Korea when that was a big nothing, and the G7 was highly significant, and that’s been completely buried in the news cycle. And liberals are responsible for that. They keep talking about Korea.
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Maybe you are just a ‘pearl-clutcher’
June 14, 2018 at 11:42 am #87353June 14, 2018 at 2:33 pm #87357wvParticipantJune 15, 2018 at 7:00 pm #87388znModeratorBTW, I really hate the fact that all the talk is still about N Korea when that was a big nothing, and the G7 was highly significant, and that’s been completely buried in the news cycle.
G7 was bad and does need to be talked about. But N.Korea was it’s own, different kind of bad.
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===Trump’s Unhinged Fox News Interview on the White House Lawn Was Frightening
Donald Trump’s admiration of Kim Jong-un shows the president embracing dictator tendenciesRyan Bort
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/trump-fox-news-interview-w521581
Donald Trump has exhibited authoritarian impulses since the early days of his campaign. But the president’s recent meeting with Kim Jong-un seems to have inspired him to throw around language and ideas that would turn America into a dictatorship. Trump gushed about the North Korean leader following their meeting in Singapore, calling him a “smart,” “funny guy” with a “great personality,” among other fawning praise. His admiration of the dictator continued on Friday during a wild, impromptu interview with Fox & Friends on the White House lawn, when the president expressed in no uncertain terms how envious he is of Kim’s regime. “He speaks and his people sit up at attention,” Trump said. “I want my people to do the same.”
TRUMP on Kim Jong Un (note the final two sentences): "He's the head of a country, and I mean he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same." (via FOX) pic.twitter.com/ed9AMRl9ny
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 15, 2018
It might be the most frightening statement of Trump’s presidency. The people of North Korea are of course forced to “sit up in attention” when Kim speaks – in 2016, Kim executed the nation’s deputy premier for education with a firing squad for showing “disrespectful posture” in a meeting. But Kim’s human rights violations do not seem to be of any concern to Trump, who has repeatedly defended the dictator’s inhumane treatment of his people. When confronted about the regime’s atrocities, Trump has made excuses ranging from “it’s rough in a lot of places” to explaining that Kim is carrying on his father’s legacy. “He’s a tough guy,” the president said to Fox’s Bret Baier on Air Force One following the summit.
When Trump says that Kim’s people “love” him, he is effectively endorsing the way Kim’s regime treats its citizens, who are often starved and incarcerated without trial. The president has legitimized North Korea through more than just his words. Many were shocked at the commingling of the American and North Korean flags in Singapore, and North Korea’s nation’s state-run TV network has since released footage of the summit that shows Trump saluting what appeared to be a high-ranking North Korean military official, a shocking visual of the president’s deference to the dictatorship.
North Korean TV has aired its first footage of the #TrumpKimSummit. Look out for the handshake/salute confusion 55 seconds in. pic.twitter.com/JS5yEUprgz
— BBC Monitoring (@BBCMonitoring) June 14, 2018
When CNN asked retired Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby, who is also a former spokesman for both the Defense and State departments, about the salute, he called it “striking,” “inappropriate from a protocol perspective” and something “you most certainly don’t do it with the leaders of foreign militaries of an adversary nation.”
The most prominent theme of Trump’s time in office has been his sustained excoriation of the American media, so it should come as no surprise that Trump was enamored by North Korea’s state-run media. According to the Washington Post, the president marveled at how positive one of the nation’s female broadcasters spoke of Kim, and remarked that she should get a job on TV in the United States. After returning from Singapore, Trump tweeted that the media is America’s “biggest enemy.”
The Post noted how Trump praised how “tough” the North Korean guards looked. It’s an adjective he also used to describe Kim’s treatment of his people, and one that Trump used repeatedly throughout the campaign and during his presidency to describe the attitude America must take toward a variety of issues.
Trump drooling over the prospect of a dictatorship was only a small part of what was a wild morning on the White House lawn. After the president noticed Fox & Friends was broadcasting only a few feet away from where he was presumably ensconced in Friday morning’s Executive Time, he tweeted that he would stop by for an “unannounced” interview. He did, clearly taking everyone off guard before sidling up next to Steve Doocy for a live interview that lasted over 30 minutes.
While speaking with Doocy, Trump cycled through most of his usual talking points, from his displeasure with the media, to the success of the economy, to the need for a border wall and how the Democrats are the ones responsible for children being separated from their parents at the border (which is not even remotely true). Also discussed was the Inspector General report that found that the FBI acted with no bias as it investigated the Trump campaign’s connection to Russia prior to the 2016 election. Despite the report’s conclusion that there was no foul play, Trump and his allies have used its contents to argue the opposite.
“I beat Clinton dynasty. I beat Bush dynasty, and now, I guess, hopefully I’m in the process of beating very dishonest intelligence,” Trump said.
Following his lengthy interview with Doocy, Trump made his way to the White House driveway, where he went back and forth with reporters for almost as long as he spoke with Fox & Friends, ranting about several of the same issues, with a focus on the Mueller investigation. “Here’s the good news: I did nothing wrong,” Trump said. The president also claimed that Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager who has been indicted on a number of crimes relating to Russia, “had nothing to do with our campaign.”
Trump defended the corruption-addled EPA chief Scott Pruitt, said he could meet with Vladimir Putin this summer and reiterated his belief that the North Korean nuclear threat is no longer a concern. “I did a great job this week,” Trump said. “You know what I gave up? I met. I met, we had great chemistry. He gave us a lot.” The president added that he and the dictator “really did hit it off.”
Though it’s concerning that Trump legitimized North Korea on a global stage by meeting with Kim and then came away from that meeting with nothing of substance, it’s just as troubling that this in-person taste of the trappings of a dictatorship has clearly renewed Trump’s vigor in taking on his perceived enemies in America. To the president, these enemies are any person or institution that attempts to question his actions or check his power. In other words, his enemies are the tenets of democracy.
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