He’s still pretending everything is cool with North Korea! Despite literally everything seemingly falling apart, North Korean officials all but saying so. Also, those remains that Trump kept harping on? Where are they? They’re certainly not here. North Korea has continued accelerating their nuclear program on a number of levels…it’s a fiasco guys It’s a FIASCO. And there Trump is, saying “No! No! It’s all cool guys! Seriously, look at this totally legit letter that Kim Jong Un sent me! That’s more legit than literally everything else!” I mean…is he just going crazy now or what? Because at a certain point, he can’t pretend everything is fine, can he?
Despite Donald Trump’s constant self back pats about his unprecedented success in North Korea, there seems to be a growing cause for concern that MAYBE Kim Jong Un isn’t as committed to de-nuclearizing the peninsula as he first might have seemed. In fact, intelligence reports seem to indicate the exact opposite, with him expanding nuclear research sites and funding into fuel for nuclear weapons. Basically the EXACT opposite of what Trump “negotiated”. Now, pettier people might go for a fun little “I told you so!” number complete with laughter and finger pointing, but I do feel like it’s appropriate to point out that he’s not the first guy to get that promise out of a Kim on the exact same thing that never came to fruition. Though it might ache a little harder for Trump considering he couldn’t help talking up how unprecedented this whole thing was. I just wonder how long Trump will feel it’s appropriate to stay in denial about it before he finally decides he’s been had?
Listen, I think it’s fair to give Trump some credit over this North Korea thing. Not even just because Trump has a bad habit of escalating problems. Frankly, even if Trump was a more laid back character, North Korea likes to be provocative in their own right. So the fact that the summit in Singapore seemingly went off without a hitch, and that some semblance of peace was established for the near future is positive. I won’t try to say that isn’t a victory. BUT, Trump and staff is trying to establish his summit as some unprecedented victory, as if North Korea has never made these promises before and for less. In fairness, I didn’t know until I bothered to look. But the reality is that North Korea has agreed to scrap their nuclear program no less than half a dozen times in almost 30 years, going as far back as when Kim Il Sung was still alive. In 1994, the they agreed to scrap the program and stop researching plutonium and uranium enrichment for food aid. Trump promised to stop our military maneuvers in South Korea, something we’ve done for 50 years, for a re-affirmation of their earlier promises from the last 30 years, with no time table or verfication process, things they’ve given in the past. Hell they didn’t even bother to promise to stop their Uranium program. In fact, by all appearances…the great negotiator got out negotiated. Again, I want to point out, the world feels a little less close to nuclear destruction than it did a week ago, and that’s a positive development. But that Trump secured a loose promise of Denuclearization…well, that feels less impressive.
So North Korea is starting to get skittish about their negotiations for peace and denuclearization, which I think a lot of people probably saw coming. They cancelled their talk with South Korea, and are threatening to kill the summit with Trump over military maneuvers our military has been doing for decades. So yeah, for those of you who thought that things with North Korea seemed to be going a little TOO smoothly, it looks like you were right. But, as a few news articles have noted, there is speculation as to whether North Korea’s sudden skittish behavior regarding denuclearization may dash Trump’s hopes of getting that Nobel Peace Prize that he feels he so richly deserves. And that loss…that would be the true tragedy….
Mind the Exit 