I know much should not be expected from a game show host posing as president, but this one takes the cake—even for The Donald. How he has been twice-suckered by the North Korean dictator is beyond comprehension. The guy is pushing 73-years-old, obese, on a myriad of medications for old guys, and he has to schlep halfway across the world to suck up to an autocrat, offering one gushing compliment after the other, and tossing around words like “love” as if they were a ‘60s soul song parody, and he gets the same thing: North Korea and Kim Jong-un have zero intentions of ceasing their nuclear capabilities or giving up their cache of weapons for America, or China, or anyone. Nor should he. Since the last meeting between the two—when they both shook hands, took photos, and told everyone that everything was fine—the North Korean Supreme Leader has gone his merry way. And it appears he will continue to do so.
So now, after all the pomp and blather, the usual pressers, and fantastic publicity Kim Jong-un gains from having the leader of the world’s most powerful nation fawning all over him while he continues to make a mockery of human rights, the whole thing falls apart with no deal, but plenty of finger-pointing and contradictory postmortems from two lying-ass camps—and a steaming pile of embarrassment for the United States.
I don’t have to ask this question, but I will: Did Trump think his fabulous charm and tough swagger was going to sway this lunatic? Because it sure seemed like he and his sycophants were hinting that for months. This is after the first détente in which Trump kissed Kim Jong-un’s ass and was certain that North Korea, shuttering in his wake, had already agreed to stop proliferating its nuclear arsenal. When his intelligence agencies, the ones he daily vilifies as if Russia’s carnival barker, showed him proof this was not the case—in fact, just the opposite, that North Korea had ramped up their weapons efforts since—the president told them they were nuts and went back to eating cheeseburgers and watching FOX & Friends.
And so, entering this farce as he does everything—ill-prepared and breathing in his mind-numbing double-shots of delusion—the president was rife for being duped and duped he would be. Within hours of ramping up his heretofore woefully lacking negotiating skills, Trump bailed. He claims Kim Jong-un would not budge on his weaponry (no shit), even while asking for the U.S. to lift all sanctions. Predictably, North Korea claims they would have gladly (I am sure, heh-heh) stopped their nuclear program for only a handful of lifted sanctions.
Let’s review: Two lying, sack of shit tyrants lied to each other, their own countries, and the world…. again.
And while Trump was over in Vietnam (he finally got there after his bullshit deferment during the war) lap-dogging a dictator who spat in his face and sent him home with his tail between his knees, his scumbag hood lawyer/fixer was telling the U.S. Congress what we already know—he’s a cheat, a racist, and a con artist. This also bodes well for the international press, who snicker behind our amateur president’s back as he takes everything from diplomacy to government shutdowns to Twitter fights with Spike Lee as performance art instead of actual governance.
But listen, unlike Trump himself, who mocked an actual working treaty with a tyrannical regime in Iran as “the worst deal ever,” I believe in trying new things with crazies, instead of the same old routine. So, when the president was selling this idea that if he couldn’t get to Kim Jong-un with nastiness and then smooching, no one can… so why not try? I did not disagree. I had doubts this moron could pull it off, but the idea was sound. Why continue to do what we’ve done for over a half century with North Korea? This was and is my point about the Iran deal, which Trump claimed to hate, while knowing nothing about it accept it was conceived and executed by Democrats during the Obama Administration. Thus, in his usual spectacular level of hypocrisy he does the same thing as Obama did with Iran with Kim Jong-un, but instead of bringing actual diplomats or representatives from the state department and written agreements that must be documented, he sits for tea and chats with a man who has him over the barrel, kicks the American press out of the room—because he knows he is getting his clocked cleaned— and then tells everyone he’s ending the proceedings. This hokey clusterfuck Trump has weaved in North Korea is just the tip of the disaterous foreign policy he has going—the dozens of people in the Defense and State Departments that have abandoned ship on this lavish one-man fantasy camp, notwithstanding.
To wit: standing at a press conference in Vietnam, Trump defended Kim Jong-un over the death of U.S. college student Otto Warmbier, who died after suffering a massive brain injury while in a North Korean prison. “I don’t believe he knew about it,” Trump told reporters. This is the kind of idiocy that sent the former Defense Secretary James Mattis running for the hills. Infamously, it was Mattis who had to explain to the befuddled El Douche in January of 2017 that we need U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula “in order to prevent World War III,” when Trump couldn’t grasp why we spend any money there. Later, Mattis would tell his subordinates at Defense that Trump “has the understanding of a fifth- or sixth-grader.” This is an insult to my daughter and her friends, as I believe they would comprehend a need for defending the region, but I’ll take that up with Mattis at a later date.
But digesting these nuggets, all of this North Korea goofiness makes sense now, doesn’t it?
I am never going to assume anything with this mess of a presidency, but I would guess this will be it for the Trump/Kim love affair. Who knows if there will be more threats, vindictive nicknames, or bizarre tweets, but with the Syrian situation in flux, this weird pussyfooting with Venezuela (troops in Colombia?), India and Pakistan (both nuclear powers) on the brink of war, and the powder keg Middle East, it is good to see a complete dunce has our back.
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James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk, and the author of Deep Tank Jersey, Fear No Art, Trailing Jesus, Midnight For Cinderella, Y, Shout It Out Loud—The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon, and coming in June 2018, Accidently Like a Martyr—The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon.
