President Trump Misstates How Much South Korea is Paying for US-ROK Alliance
I wonder if President Trump is given briefing notes to review before he talks because this is a big difference in numbers he misstated:
U.S. President Donald Trump said South Korea’s payment for the U.S. troop presence will increase further only days after both sides signed a one-year deal for the defense cost sharing.
Korea Times
“Working with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, they (South Korea) agreed to pay, yesterday, $500 million (560 billion) more toward their defense,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting, Tuesday (local time).
On Sunday, Seoul and Washington signed the one-year provisional deal on defense cost sharing, called the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) for the upkeep of United States Forces Korea (USFK).
Under the 2019 SMA, the South will pay 1.04 trillion won toward the upkeep of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops here, up 8.2 percent from the previous year. This is an increase of 78.7 billion won, compared with last year, not the amount stated by Trump.
It remains unclear why the U.S. president made the remark with such an obviously factual error. But it is highly likely that he overstated the amount to score a political point there and raise his approval rating.
You can read more at the link.
It’s a yuge mistake… unless it’s true…
The Korea Times may be just as factual as the Hanky and the NYT…
We’ll see…
Maybe the difference includes additional aircraft, ships, tanks, artillery?
Not just what they’re paying us, total defense budget?
From the beggining burdensharing with the ROK has been full of lies and deception overseen by corrupt,
and moral midgets.
It’s not a ‘misstatement’.
Trump is just lying. Why not just say what it is?
Trump misspoke. That is news? If he had been correct about something, that would be news….
It doesn’t matter if Trump is given briefing notes. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t read anything unless it’s a tweet. The man is a complete incompetent.