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.
In long interview with Michael Schmidt of the New York Times, President Trump had plenty to say about how China has not been helpful enough with enforcing sanctions on North Korea:
SCHMIDT: What’s going on there. Tell me about that.
TRUMP: Yeah, China. … China’s been. … I like very much President Xi. He treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China. You know that. The presentations. … One of the great two days of anybody’s life and memory having to do with China. He’s a friend of mine, he likes me, I like him, we have a great chemistry together. He’s [inaudible] of the United States. …[Inaudible.] China’s hurting us very badly on trade, but I have been soft on China because the only thing more important to me than trade is war. O.K.?
[Cross talk with guests.]
_________
SCHMIDT: Can you finish your thought on North Korea. What’s going on with China?
TRUMP: I’m disappointed. You know that they found oil going into. …
SCHMIDT: But how recently?
TRUMP: It was very recently. In fact, I hate to say, it was reported this morning, and it was reported on Fox. Oil is going into North Korea. That wasn’t my deal!
SCHMIDT: What was the deal?
TRUMP: My deal was that, we’ve got to treat them rough. They’re a nuclear menace so we have to be very tough.
RUDDY: Mr. President, was that a picture from recent or was that months ago? I don’t know. …
TRUMP: Oil is going into North Korea, I know. Oil is going into North Korea. So I’m not happy about it.
SCHMIDT: So what are you going to do?
TRUMP: We’ll see. That I can’t tell you, Michael. But we’ll see. I can tell you one thing: This is a problem that should have been handled for the last 25 years. This is a problem, North Korea. That should have been handled for 25, 30 years, not by me. This should have been handled long before me. Long before this guy has whatever he has.
TRUMP: No, look, I like China, and I like him a lot. But, as you know, when I campaigned, I was very tough on China in terms of trade. They made — last year, we had a trade deficit with China of $350 billion, minimum. That doesn’t include the theft of intellectual property, O.K., which is another $300 billion. So, China — and you know, somebody said, oh, currency manipulation. If they’re helping me with North Korea, I can look at trade a little bit differently, at least for a period of time. And that’s what I’ve been doing. But when oil is going in, I’m not happy about that. I think I expressed that in probably [inaudible].
TRUMP, as aides walk by: And, by the way, it’s not a tweet. It’s social media, and it gets out in the world, and the reason I do well is that I can be treated unfairly and very dishonestly by CNN, and, you know, I have — what do have now, John, 158 million, including Facebook, including Twitter, including Instagram, including every form, I have a 158 million people. Reporting just this morning, they said 158 million. So if they a do a story that’s false, I can do something — otherwise, Andy, otherwise you just sort of walk around saying what can I do? What, am I going to have a press conference every time somebody, every time Michael writes something wrong?
So, China on trade has ripped off this country more than any other element of the world in history has ripped off anything. But I can be different if they’re helping us with North Korea. If they don’t help us with North Korea, then I do what I’ve always said I want to do. China can help us much more, and they have to help us much more. And they have to help us much more. We have a nuclear menace out there, which is no good for China, and it’s not good for Russia. It’s no good for anybody. Does that make sense?
SCHMIDT: Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
TRUMP: The only thing that supersedes trade to me — because I’m the big trade guy, I got elected to a certain extent on trade. You see, I’m renegotiating Nafta, or I’ll terminate it. If I don’t make the right deal, I’ll terminate Nafta in two seconds. But we’re doing pretty good. You know, it’s easier to renegotiate it if we make it a fair deal because Nafta was a terrible deal for us. We lost $71 billion a year with Mexico, can you believe it? $17 billion with Canada — Canada says we broke even. But they don’t include lumber and they don’t include oil. Oh, that’s not. … [Inaudible,] … My friend Justin he says, “No, no, we break even.” I said, ‘Yeah, but you’re not including oil, and you’re not including lumber.” When you do, you lose $17 billion, and with the other one, we’re losing $71 billion. So the only thing that supersedes trade to me is war. If we can solve the North Korea problem. China cannot. …
SCHMIDT: You still think there’s a diplomatic solution?
TRUMP: China has a tremendous power over North Korea. Far greater than anyone knows.
SCHMIDT: Why haven’t they stood up?
TRUMP: I hope they do, but as of this moment, they haven’t. They could be much stronger.
SCHMIDT: But why not?
TRUMP: China can solve the North Korea problem, and they’re helping us, and they’re even helping us a lot, but they’re not helping us enough. [New York Times]
A group of Islamic residents and South Korean activists holds a news conference condemning U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in front of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul on Dec. 12, 2017. (Yonhap)
I don’t see what is so surprising about President Trump’s comment, it is no secret that he has been pushing to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States:
While circling the sky near the inter-Korean border last week, U.S. President Donald Trump posed a question that later took the leader of South Korea’s ruling party by surprise.
According to Choo Mi-ae of the Democratic Party, Trump was on his Marine One helicopter to the heavily fortified demilitarized zone when he turned to White House chief economic director Gary Cohn and said: “I just saw something amazing. There are so many factories. Can’t they be built in the U.S.?”
The trip to the DMZ was later canceled due to fog and Trump had to turn back to Seoul to continue his two-day state visit. The trip was watched closely because Trump had threatened to use military options against North Korea and engaged in a war of words with the regime over its nuclear and missile programs.
“I think President Trump understood, while he was in the air for 30 minutes, that 25 million people were living in the area below him and that they would be wiped out in the event of war,” Choo said in a meeting with reporters in New York. “But I was so surprised when Director Cohn told me this story. Wasn’t (Trump) essentially saying we should build our auto parts factories in the U.S., too?” [Yonhap]
Here is the latest Presidential Twitter drama involving North Korea:
President Donald Trump is exchanging school yard taunts with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
In a response to North Korea calling Trump’s speech in South Korea “reckless remarks by an old lunatic,” Trump tweeted from Hanoi on Sunday morning: “Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?'”
Trump goes on to say sarcastically, “Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend — and maybe someday that will happen!” [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but President Trump has called Kim Jong-un a “little Rocket Man” in the past.
What a waste of time if these CNN journalists thought their “man-on-the-street” interviews in Pyongyang were going to reveal anything different than the Kim regime’s propaganda talking points:
Ri Won Gil, an editor, told CNN Trump “knows nothing” about life in North Korea.
US President Donald Trump had already flown to China by the time ordinary North Koreans heard he’d addressed South Korea’s National Assembly.
In a damning speech on Wednesday, Trump called the isolated communist country “a hell that no person deserves.” The rebuttal from North Koreans was equally harsh.
One woman CNN spoke to on the streets of Pyongyang called Trump’s assertion “foolish,” “absurd” and another word CNN cannot print. “The reality here is very different. We’re leading a happy life,” Ri Yong Hui, a house wife in Pyongyang, told CNN.
North Korean state media reported that Trump had spoken on Thursday, but did not include concrete details of his speech, in which the President slammed Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.
The North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun characterized Trump’s words as “garbage spewing like gunpowder out of Trump’s snout like garbage that reeks of gun powder to ignite war.”
Coverage on state television and in newspapers focused on a small number of protesters outside the National Assembly, despite the fact that they were outnumbered by those rallying in support of the US President.
CNN’s government minders allowed us to reveal the actual contents of what Trump said to citizens on the streets of Pyongyang, agreeing to take us down to a busy street corner and interview citizens.
We approached several people. Most were unwilling to speak to us, but not Ri.
“Trump has no right to talk about human rights,” Ri said, as the government minders translated for her. “He’s a simple war maniac.” [CNN]
You can read the rest at the link, but everyone interviewed said the same thing. It is pretty clear the only people talking to the journalists were those cleared by the Kim regime to speak to CNN to push the government’s anti-Trump talking points. If these CNN journalists thought anyone in Pyongyang was going to tell a bunch of foreigners surrounded by government minders and say anything negative about North Korea they are absolute fools. If they are not fools that means they knew full well they would receive government propaganda and they went ahead and published it any way likely because it was anti-Trump.
It figures that the Moon Jae-in administration would find a way to stick to the Japanese during President Trump’s visit:
U.S. President Donald Trump hugs sex slavery victim Lee Yong-soo at a state dinner at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Tuesday. /Yonhap
The rightwing government in Tokyo was duly incensed when Korea served U.S. President Donald Trump shrimp caught near Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo, to which Japan maintains a flimsy colonial claim.
Worse in the eyes of the nationalists in Japan was the invitation to a state dinner for Trump on Tuesday of a victim of imperial Japan’s sexual enslavement of women during World War II.
Tokyo protested through diplomatic channels that Cheong Wa Dae’s invitation of sex slavery victim Lee Yong-soo to the state dinner is “against the purport” of a 2015 agreement to compensate the women, which was once described as “a final and irreversible resolution,” according to the Yomiuri Shimbun on Wednesday.
The controversial deal, which trades indirect compensation for a promise to remove memorials for the victims from the vicinity of Japanese diplomatic missions, makes no mention of what events the victims of the atrocity can or cannot be invited to.
The new government of President Moon Jae-in wants to reverse it. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but why were the victims of Chinese and North Korean atrocities not invited to the state dinner?
The fog can get very think around the Imjim River area where Panmunjom is located. I have been out in the field before north of the Imjim where people got lost because of how thick the fog was and had to yell for people to assist them to get back to their vehicle. If the fog was that thick I can understand why the Secret Service would not want to land the helicopter. However, you would think they would have had a Plan B to get the President there by car:
A surprise visit by President Donald Trump to the heavily fortified Korean demilitarized zone was thwarted by bad weather Wednesday — a day after Trump modulated his aggressive rhetoric and urged North Korea to come to the negotiating table.
Trump had been scheduled to make the unannounced early-morning trip to the DMZ amid heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Marine One left Seoul at daybreak and flew most of the way to the DMZ but was forced to turn back just five minutes out due to poor weather conditions. Reporters traveling in a chinook helicopter as part of the president’s envoy saw fog out the helicopters’ windows, and weather reports from near the heavily fortified border showed misting conditions and visibility below one mile. Pilots, officials said, could not see the other helicopters in the air.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president was disappointed he couldn’t make the trip. “I think he’s pretty frustrated,” she told reporters traveling with the president. “It was obviously something he wanted to do.”
Before he left for Asia, a White House official had ruled out the DMZ trip for Trump, claiming the president didn’t have time on his schedule and that DMZ visits have become a little cliché.
But Sanders said the visit had been planned well before Trump’s departure for Asia. The trip was kept secret, Sanders said, for security reasons.
Trump had been scheduled to make the visit with South Korean president Moon Jae-in, who traveled separately and landed about a 20-minute drive from the DMZ. Sanders said the military and the U.S. Secret Service had deemed that landing would not be safe, and Trump deferred to them. [Stars & Stripes]
