Tag: Donald Trump

It seems to me that the Kim regime is working hard to butter up the US President while playing hardball with his underlings:

President Donald Trump Thursday released a letter from Kim Jong Un, in which the North Korean leader voices confidence in efforts to end their nuclear standoff, while calling on his US counterpart to take “practical actions” to build trust.

“A very nice note from Chairman Kim of North Korea,” Trump tweeted alongside a copy of the letter dated July 6 — the day that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Pyongyang for what turned out to be difficult talks with Kim’s regime.

“Great progress being made!” Trump added in his tweet.

In the letter Kim describes his June 12 summit with Trump in Singapore, and the resulting joint statement agreed by both sides, as the “start of a meaningful journey.”

“I firmly believe that the strong will, sincere efforts and unique approach of myself and Your Excellency Mr. President aimed at opening up a new future between the DPRK and the U.S. will sure surely come to fruition,” Kim writes.

“I deeply appreciate the energetic and extraordinary efforts made by Your Excellency Mr. President for the improvement of relations between the two countries and the faithful implementation of the joint statement,” he adds.

The North Korean leader also voices hope that “the invariable trust and confidence in Your Excellency Mr. President will be further strengthened in the future process of taking practical actions.”  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but my thoughts on this is that the Kim regime as well as the Moon administration in South Korea, both understand that guys like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo have no intention of dropping sanctions until real denuclearization occurs.  That is why I believe they have been trying to appeal to President Trump’s ego in attempt to overrule his advisors and drop the sanctions for pretend denuclearization deal.

That is why I believe President Moon has come out and said that President Trump should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and now we have Kim Jong-un appealing to his ego by calling Trump “Your Excellency” repeatedly.  Time will tell if their strategy works or not.

It looks like people are starting to realize that President Trump has been following John Bolton’s advice all along in regards to North Korea:

First, Trump could simply choose to shrug, continue to tweet that the North Korean threat has evaporated, and direct Pompeo to secure concessions in any way possible. This would be a likely path to appeasing Pyongyang, resulting in the United States giving up valuable leverage for virtually cosmetic North Korean concessions like the reversible dismantlement of tunnel entrances at the Punggye-ri nuclear site. North Korea has plenty of old and now out-of-use nuclear and missile sites it could happily detonate before the international press.

Second, Trump could simply allow the North Korea process that began on June 12 to quietly collapse and put the issue of its nuclear program and disarmament on ice—call it a return to “strategic patience.”

The problem here is that the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign is all but dead after the Singapore summit and it’s more likely than not that China, along with Russia, will ease up on the implementation of existing sanctions and perhaps even call for a removal of United Nations sanctions applied in 2017 on North Korean exports.

In this scenario, the U.S. loses interest and North Korea benefits economically while continuing to build out its nuclear program without constraints. This would be the equivalent of a continuation of the muddling-through approach that three consecutive U.S. administrations found themselves resigned to with North Korea, updated for the era of a considerably more capable North Korea.

Third, Trump could find himself left with nothing but the literal nuclear option. Feeling spurned and humiliated by Kim, Trump may find that the only way to move forward is to let John Bolton’s March 2017 prophecy come true.

Weeks before entering the White House as Trump’s advisor on national security affairs, Bolton, as a private citizen, had remarked on Trump’s acceptance of Kim’s invitation that “[The purpose of this process is to] foreshorten the amount of time that we’re going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want, which is Kim giving up his nuclear program.”

Gone would be the days of “all options” being on the table. Trump might conclude then that the only path to denuclearization is an all-out military strike on North Korea—a trigger to a nuclear war that would engulf Northeast Asia in tremendous destruction and likely parts of the U.S. homeland, given North Korea’s intercontinental-range ballistic missile capability.

None of these scenarios are appealing, though the third is quite clearly the worst. Trump’s Monday tweet offers the clearest glimpse of why diplomacy-for-diplomacy’s-sake with North Korea can be dangerous—even if it pulled us back from the brink of “fire and fury.”  [Daily Beast]

You can read more at the link, but I have been saying this for quite sometime that I think the Trump administration is simply giving the Kim regime one last chance to rejoin the world community and denuclearize.  It almost seems like they are checking every box to say they have tried every peaceful means to get them to denuclearize.  If the Kim regime does not take advantage of this chance I think other options will be seriously considered and appeasement which this article suggests will not be one of those options.

Here is the latest response by President Trump to critics of his North Korea policy:

President Trump on Tuesday brushed aside questions over whether his assertion that he “solved” the crisis with North Korea was premature amid reports its leader, Kim Jong Un, is trying to conceal parts of its nuclear weapons program.

“Many good conversations with North Korea — it is going well!” Trump tweeted. “In the meantime, no Rocket Launches or Nuclear Testing in 8 months. All of Asia is thrilled. Only the Opposition Party, which includes the Fake News, is complaining.”

“””

Trump’s brash declaration comes two days before Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to travel to North Korea to meet with Kim — his third trip to the rogue nuclear nation.  [Yahoo News]

You can read more at the link.

ROK Drop favorite Michael Breen writes in the Korea Times that critics of President Trump’s North Korea policy need to show more patience.  Good luck with that ever happening, but he does accurately depict the media environment that is driving much of the negative criticism against Trump:

And yet, a majority of experts have criticized the American president. Why? Failure to secure a more detailed agreement. Talk about impatience.

This criticism is widespread, despite the fact that everyone accepts that, in contrast to many summit meetings where the top leaders sign off on agreements reached between their respective teams, this one was intended to kickstart a process.

So why was the analysis not about a good start?

I believe there are two parts to the answer and they are not easily separated. One is the good faith expert viewpoint and the other is the media environment in which it is expressed.  (…………)

The error in my opinion derives from media obsession with the person of the American president. This both slants reporting and media commentary and influences the way experts deliver their opinions.

If truth be told, media love Donald Trump. He just has to scratch his head and it’s newsworthy. Underlying almost all coverage is a view that he is morally and psychologically unfit to be president. (This is partly because he is a Republican, a party that has almost zero support among news reporters, and partly because, well, he is kind of unorthodox.)

The daily Trump story satisfies on the titillation level ― look what the idiot has done now ― and on the media self-righteousness level ― be warned, this is serious, this man has his finger on the button.

Had Barack Obama held this summit with Kim and achieved the same result, he would probably be up for his second Nobel Peace Prize. But because it’s Trump, I expect that even if the North does de-nuclearize, sign a Korean war peace treaty, and open an embassy in Pyongyang and open the gulag, Trump will still be found wanting.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Legitimizing and praising a dictator does not give us a real and permanent peace. It’s a delusional and fake peace that Trump wants us to believe. We must hold North Korea’s murderous Kim dictator accountable. We must fight for a world where justice… https://t.co/S44Xcp3Jvq

— Yeonmi Park (박연미) (@YeonmiParkNK) June 21, 2018

That's because from what we can see so far, it looks like a really shitty deal — far worse than the Iran JCPOA, far worse than Agreed Frameworks I & II, almost sure to consolidate Kim Jong-un's domestic control, nuclear status & hegemony over South Korea. https://t.co/4qVpZlCYw7

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) June 17, 2018

After opening the article bashing the President Trump for the recent Singapore summit, the article then goes on to explain that the summit was a huge success in the opinion of South Koreans:

In South Korea, however, the prism is different. Discussions center less on Trump’s achievements or lack of them, or his failures to live up to his own word, and more on the possibilities his summit opened up — in particular his new relationship with Kim. Which is why they welcome phone calls between the pair.

Singapore was not a failure for many in South Korea, but an opportunity.

According to a Gallup survey of more than 1,000 people two days after the summit, two thirds of the population said they think the Kim/Trump meeting was a success. Only one in 10 thought it a failure.  [CNN]

I guess the next time a provocation cycle happens they can both just call and insult each other instead of using Twitter 😉 :

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he gave North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a direct phone number to reach him and that he plans to make a phone call to Kim.

“I can now call him. I gave him a very direct number,” he told reporters at the White House. “He can now call me if he has any difficulty. We have communication.”

His remarks come days after his first and historic encounter in Singapore with the leader of the reclusive state on Tuesday.

Trump also said he plans to personally call Kim on Sunday.

Trump and Kim declared in a joint text following the summit their commitment toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula while guaranteeing the security of Kim’s dynastic regime.  [Yonhap]

I wonder if Trump during the phone call will joke to Kim Jong-un to send him 25 million illegal Mexican immigrants?

Here is yet another example of why President Trump calls them the “fake news” media:

Donald Trump threatened Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he would ship 25 million Mexicans to his country, one of a series of bizarre missives that jarred fellow leaders at last week’s acrimonious G7 meet, according to a report on Friday.

The Group of Seven summit gathering of top industrialized democracies finished in disarray after the US president abruptly rejected its consensus statement and bitterly attacked Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Behind the scenes, Trump’s counterparts were dismayed by verbal jabs on topics ranging from trade to terrorism and migration, The Wall Street Journal said, quoting European officials who were present.

At one point he described migration as a big problem for Europe then said to Abe: “Shinzo, you don’t have this problem, but I can send you 25 million Mexicans and you’ll be out of office very soon,” creating a sense of irritation in the room, according to an EU official.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but Trump did not “threaten” Shinzo Abe as this article claims.  He was clearly using sarcasm to make a point to the people in the room.  Any journalist publishing articles insinuating that Trump literally meant to round up 25 million illegal immigrants and ship them to Japan are clearly dishonest and part of the fake news problem.

What do I think about today's joint agreement? It has zero practical value. The U.S. could have extracted serious concessions, but it was not done. N.Korea will be emboldened and the U.S. got nothing: https://t.co/FXkkURMnpC

— Andrei Lankov (@andreilankov) June 12, 2018