New Book Tries to Claim President Trump is an Idiot When It Comes to Korea

There is a new book out and of course to create traction in the media with it the author has to claim that President Trump is an idiot:

During that conversation, Wead wrote, Trump reiterated his belief that Obama would have gone to war with the North had he stayed in office.

“And I also think that thirty to one hundred million people could have been killed,” Wead quoted the president as saying.

South Korea has 51.2 million people and North Korea has a population of 25 million.

Trump then expressed disbelief at experts’ predictions that 100,000-200,000 people would die, a number he said was the equivalent of the population of a South Korean village.

“Well, as you know, Seoul, the capital city, is right by the so-called border,” he continued, according to Wead. “And that is a tough border by the way. An impenetrable border. And Seoul has a population of thirty million people. Kim has ten thousand guns, artillery, they call them cannons. He doesn’t even need a nuclear weapon to create one of the greatest calamities in history.”

The population of Seoul is just under 10 million.

Yonhap

When I read Trump’s comments I clearly understood that when he was talking about Seoul he was referencing the Seoul metropolitan area. The Seoul city center has 10 million, but the metro area has 25 million. Also when he is talking about upwards of 100 million casualties how do we know he wasn’t including if a nuclear weapon was dropped on Tokyo or other major cities? It is context like this that is important, but to get media attention he must be described as an idiot, so mission accomplished by this author.

The only real idiots are whoever told him a war on the Korean peninsula would only lead to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. If they did not use nukes I could maybe understand that number, but I find it hard to believe that if North Korea went all in and used nuclear weapons, that only that many people would die.

A quote I did find interesting that may explain why President Trump is pushing so hard on the Moon administration on USFK cost sharing is the status of the THAAD battery in South Korea:

“Do you know how much we spend defending South Korea? Four and half billion dollars a year. Figure that one out?” he added.

Trump has reportedly demanded that South Korea raise its contribution to shared defense costs to US$5 billion next year, a five-fold increase from this year.

Trump also complained to Wead that the people who treated the U.S. the worst were its allies.

“And you’ve heard the story with South Korea with the missiles system, with the THAAD anti-missile system?” he was quoted as saying.

I read that to mean that he is not happy about how the Moon administration is allowing the blockade of the road to the THAAD battery to occur. ROK Heads may remember that the road is still blocked and all supplies and personnel to the battery have to be flown in by helicopter. The battery though there to protect South Koreans is frequently used by Moon’s leftist allies to promote wild conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism.

Trump we have seen has a long memory when it comes to things he does not like and maybe the THAAD issue is something he is still unhappy about and influencing the cost sharing talks?