Rex Tillerson has been rumored for quite some time to be on thin ice with President Trump. Apparently the agreement to a summit between Kim Jong-un and President Trump is what has caused his firing:
Rex Tillerson
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired on Twitter after returning from an Africa trip in which he was out of the loop on North Korean talks and contradicted the White House position on Russia’s responsibility for poisoning a British spy.
In other words, his last week on the job was just like any other.
In his 14-month tenure as the nation’s top diplomat, Tillerson often found himself trying to interpret President Trump’s mercurial and contradictory foreign policy to the rest of the world.
He reassured NATO allies that the United States remained committed to the alliance even after the president threatened to pull out over “dues” that Trump believed were owed directly to the United States. (They weren’t.)
He tried to salvage the Iran nuclear deal through a European-brokered fix to the Obama-era agreement, rather than having Trump scuttle the deal completely.
Trump specifically cited differences over the Iran deal Tuesday. “I thought it was terrible, I guess, he feels it was OK.”
Now, Trump is heading into an unprecedented face-to-face meeting with North Korea’sKim Jong Un over that country’s nuclear program. The timing of the move was designed to allow Trump to put a new team in place in advance of those talks, said a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a personnel decision. [USA Today]
You can read more at the link, but Tillerson late last week undercut Trump in regards to the upcoming summit:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared Friday to undercut President Donald Trump’s expected meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, stressing that only “talks” rather than “negotiations” would take place when the two men sit down sometime in the coming months.
Tillerson, who has clashed with Trump and seen his own work on North Korea publicly admonished by the president, did not clarify his distinction between talks and negotiations when speaking with the Associated Press. [Newsweek]
CIA director Mike Pompeo is taking over for Tillerson if confirmed by the Senate. This would give him about two months to put together the summit with Kim Jong-un.
A professor at Kyunghee University, Emanuel Yi Pastreich believes that President Trump is governing the United States based on the North Korean model:
Emanuel Pastreich
But there is a mysterious mojo that the elites draw from the ludicrous actions of their dear leader. Now it seems as if Kim Jung-un has found his greatest fan, and imitator, in the corridors of power of Washington D.C.
That is right, for all his bluster about destroying North Korea, Donald Trump is practically modeling his every speech on the craft of the bad boy of Pyongyang. When Trump threatens to “wipe North Korea off the face of the Earth,” he still cannot get the traction of Kim’s eloquent “sea of fire.”
And Trump’s tantrums in which he rages that Kim is “short and fat,” a “sick puppy,” and “a madman” simply lack the erudite simplicity of Kim’s putdown “dotard”
The Trump administration has adopted the “North Korean model” for governance, diplomacy and security and even embraced North Korea’s legendary “military first” economics as its own national strategy. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but comparing President Trump to Kim Jong-un is lazy analysis just like the people who compare him to Hitler. Until President Trump starts opening concentration camps, executing the political opposition, counterfeiting money, smuggling drugs, etc. that are staples of the North Korean regime then you can claim he is acting like Kim Jong-un.
Once again President Trump has the media all worked up by a Tweet:
If you were looking for a two-word slogan to describe Donald Trump’s life, that would be a fitting one. In everything — from the size of his buildings to the size of his genitals to the size of his nuclear arsenal, Trump is totally and completely obsessed with being the biggest and the best.
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
“Much bigger & more powerful.” “My Button works.”
If you don’t see what Trump is going for there, then we need to have a side conversation about the birds and the bees. This is a measuring contest provoked by the President of the United States against an unstable dictator pursuing a nuclear capacity.
It’s absolutely stunning given the stakes: Nuclear war/annihilation. At the same time, it’s an entirely predictable tactic from Trump given what he we know about him. [CNN]
You can read more at the link, but the President actually does not have a nuclear button which the media seems to enjoy pointing out. However, only stupid people think the President actually has a big red button on his desk to launch nukes, so I understood he was trying to be funny mocking Kim Jong-un’s button claim while at the same time answering another threat from the Kim regime. All people need to take from the President’s latest Tweet is that any threat that the Kim regime makes President Trump is going to respond in kind in his own way.
Another ICBM test has quickly changed the calculations at the State Department in regards to talks with North Korea:
Rex Tillerson
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that Washington is willing to begin talks with North Korea without preconditions.
Tillerson’s remark came as tensions have increased over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs with its latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29.
“We’re ready to talk whenever North Korea is ready to talk and we’re willing to have a first meeting without preconditions,” he told a forum here. “We can talk about the weather if you want.”
It was a markedly different tone from Washington’s earlier insistence that Pyongyang first halt its missile and nuclear testing and demonstrate its sincerity about denuclearization.
“I don’t think it’s realistic if you say we’re only going to talk if you give up your programs,” Tillerson continued. “It really depends on how you bring it up. He’s clearly not like his father or his grandfather, and we don’t know what it will be like to engage with him. [Yonhap]
It seems that when President Trump goes on these foreign trips he likes to stick to his prepared script which really seems to help articulate the message he is trying to make. I think the message to North Korea was made quite clear during his speech to the ROK National Assembly:
President Donald Trump speaks at the National Assembly in Seoul, Wednesday. Trump was on a two-day official visit to South Korea, the second stop on his 12-day tour of Asia. / Yonhap
U.S. President Donald Trump stressed “peace through strength” in his speech at the National Assembly, Wednesday, giving a stern warning to North Korea.
“The regime has interpreted America’s past restraint as weakness,” Trump said referring to North Korea.“Do not underestimate us.Do not try us.We will defend our common security, our shared prosperity and our sacred liberty.”
The U.S.president cited the country’s military assets deployed around the peninsula ― the world’s three largest aircraft carriers, loaded to the maximum with F-35 and F-18 fighter jets, in addition to nuclear submarines.
“The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer,” Trump said.“We will offer a path to a much better future,” he added, on the condition of Pyongyang’s “total denuclearization.”
This was the first address by a sitting American leader here in nearly a quarter century.South Korean lawmakers applauded the speech 22 times, particularly when the American leader lauded the nation’s flourishing democracy and eye-opening economic development.
The U.S.leader dedicated most of his 35-minute speech to awakening the atrocities taking place in North Korea ― forced labor, starvation, sexual exploitation, murder and torture ― labeling the country as “hell.”
“The regime has made numerous lethal incursions in South Korea, attempted to assassinate senior leaders, attacked South Korean ships and tortured Otto Warmbier, ultimately leading to that fine young man’s death.”
He highlighted its stark difference with the southern part of the peninsula that features the “stunning skyline of Seoul.” The president described the armistice line between the two Koreas as a line “between peace and war, between decency and depravity, between law and tyranny, between hope and total despair.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link and you can watch his full comments at the below video:
Overall I was pretty impressed with his speech especially when he highlights all the human rights abuses happening in North Korea which is often overlooked by politicians and the media.
