Tag Archives: Kim Jong Un

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Welcome to the new normal in Trump World

Let’s call it the “New Normal” in the world of Donald John Trump Sr.

The president of the United States announced via Twitter that he would meet with North Korean strongman/boy Kim Jong Un. He didn’t tell Secretary of State Rex Tillerson any of this in advance.

Then he fired Tillerson and brought in CIA Director Mike Pompeo to run the State Department.

And then … he places a congratulatory phone call to another despot, Russian goon Vladimir Putin, who stole an election — the one that re-elected him, poisoned a former spy and his daughter, meddled in our 2016 election. He placed that call against the vehement advice of his national security team. Trump didn’t bother to mention a word about the poisoning or Putin’s attack on our electoral system. He couldn’t be bothered with any of that small stuff.

Then the national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, resigned — today! Trump then announced he was hiring John Bolton, the fiery former United Nations ambassador, the uber-hawk.

The president is set to meet with a prime U.S. adversary, North Korea, in the midst of a nuclear threat. The secretary of state is fired; the national security adviser has quit. Oh, and the State Department has virtually zero deputy or under secretaries to do the necessary spade work in preparation for what could be either a landmark summit … or a complete bust!

Trump’s take on all of this? Hey, it’s no problem! He’s forging at this moment the perfect team to surround him.

Oh, brother. The man has gone through four communications directors, he has hired his second White House chief of staff, he has just hired his third national security adviser. He forced out a press secretary. And all this has occurred with just 15 months of the man’s administration!

That’s normal? Not in any manner that makes sense.

In Trump World, though, it’s all part of the game plan that will “make America great again.”

Outrageous!

media news, national news

Hypocrisy infects the media, too

Media critics, pundits and commentators love to blast politicians for their hypocrisy. Goodness, there’s so much of it out there.

But a stunning compilation of criticism and commentary began making the rounds on social media not long after Donald J. Trump announced his intention to meet with Kim Jong Un, the brutal dictator of North Korea.

It comes from the Fox News Channel.

Fox paraded a number of commentators and “contributors” who were simply aghast — aghast, I tell ya — that Barack Obama said he would be willing to meet with the enemies of the United States.

How could a U.S. president say such a thing? How could he want to meet with Kim Jong Un? Doesn’t he know what kind of monster Kim Jong Un is, how he treats his people, how he denies them the rights that should be afforded to all human beings?

That was the sum of the Fox News commentary at the beginning of the Obama presidency.

Take a look at it here.

Ah, but then Donald Trump announces that he has accepted Kim’s invitation to meet. He wants to elevate “Little Rocket Man” to the same level as the Leader of the Free World.

How did that go down in the Fox News Channel newsroom? Hey, it’s a show of statesmanship. It’s an act of boldness. Trump is exhibiting international leadership.

That’s how the Fox team assesses a U.S.-North Korea summit now.

Hypocrisy? Certainly!

I believe the Fox News Channel needs to be, um, more circumspect when it considers whether to unload on politicians for their own hypocritical displays.

International news

What? A new national security adviser, too?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is gone. Fired! Canned! Kaput!

Now it’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster, the active-duty Army lieutenant general, who’s reportedly out. He, too, will be booted, according to multiple media reports.

In the span of one week — that’s just seven days — Donald Trump reportedly has dismantled two key components of his national security/foreign policy team.

Oh, and the timing of all this madness? Yep, the president is supposedly prepping for a summit with “Little Rocket Man,” the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

McMaster is the second national security adviser to work for Trump in the past 14 months. The first one, Michael Flynn, lasted all of 24 days before he got the boot.

And through all of this, Donald Trump would have us believe that all is well, all is good, all is working just as it is supposed to work within the White House.

I, um, think not.

Chaos is king in the West Wing.

International news

Trump: master of impeccable timing? Hardly!

Donald John Trump compiled his pre-presidential notoriety by telling people “You’re fired!”

He parlayed that reputation as a tough guy into a winning presidential campaign. So … how does this guy fire the secretary of state? How does he tell Rex Tillerson his services no longer were needed?

He tweets it. He lets Tillerson hear about it along with the rest of Planet Earth. Classy, yes? Courageous, eh? No and no.

What’s more, the timing of this departure could not possibly have come at a worse time. The president didn’t bother to tell Tillerson that he was going to accept an invitation to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Tillerson was visiting Africa when word came from Trump.

The master of chaos has shown one more time — with many more sure to follow — how he seeks to govern. He doesn’t know what the hell he is doing.

Tillerson’s departure comes just as the State Department needs to start laying the groundwork for this upcoming bilateral meeting with Trump and Kim. How in the world does Trump think the State Department is going to prepare adequately for a summit that might be designed to persuade the North Koreans to cease its nuclear weapons development program?

Hell, State has many deputy and under secretary positions yet to fill. Tillerson was operating as a one-man band at the State Department, with damn few key deputy positions filled with capable diplomats.

Trump, meanwhile, keeps yapping and yammering about how “great” he is doing as president. He keeps telling us about all the top-tier minds seeking employment in the Trump administration.

I don’t believe Tillerson was a good choice to be secretary of state. If the president had any pull among top Republicans with actual diplomatic experience, he could have selected someone more qualified for this job than Tillerson.

The two men didn’t get along.

There’s the infamous “moron” epithet that came from Tillerson, directed squarely at the president.

There’s much work to do to get the president ready for this summit. It’s a big deal, given the insults he and Kim Jong Un have traded for the past year-plus.

To think, moreover, that Trump actually expects us to believe he is in command of the situation. This president does not know what he is doing.

International news

Welcome to center stage, Mike Pompeo

Can there be a more complicated set of circumstances awaiting the next secretary of state?

Donald Trump tweets the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He tweets it, I’m tellin’ ya. Tillerson said he doesn’t know why he was canned. The president then said he’s going to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to be the next top diplomat.

Oh … and this is occurring while the United States is beginning to prepare for a potentially historic summit between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Tillerson today thanks everyone under the sun for the opportunity to serve as secretary of state. Well, almost everyone. He doesn’t thank Trump. Um, I’m betting Trump and Tillerson aren’t going to talk much to each other going forward.

Pffeww!!

I’m worn out — and I’m out here in the Flyover Country peanut gallery.

Pompeo also happens to one of those intelligence experts who believes the Russians meddled in our 2016 presidential election. He has said so on the record. He joins a distinguished list of officials: the director of national intelligence, the head of the National Security Agency, the president’s national security adviser (who well could be the next one out the door). They’ve all said the same thing: The Russians did it and they all contradict the idiocy spouted by the president, that if Vladimir Putin says he didn’t do it, then that’s good enough.

I sincerely hope someone on on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must vote to confirm Pompeo, asks him directly — once more — whether he still believes the Russians meddled in our election.

And with equal sincerity, I hope the Senate wastes little time in getting Pompeo confirmed. He’s got a full plate waiting for him when he takes over.

I mean — crap! — he’s got to prepare the president for this summit with Kim Jong Un. I’ll also have to hope Donald Trump will listen to what the new guy has to say.

International news, national news, political news

Get ready for key summit? Sure! Fire the secretary of state!

So, this is how you prepare for a potentially history-making summit with a foreign adversary.

You send your secretary of state to Africa, announce — without his knowledge — that you want to meet with the head of a nation with which we still are technically at war.

Then you fire the secretary of state — the nation’s top diplomatic official — and replace him with someone else!

There you go! That’s how you do it!

Donald Trump has just given Rex Tillerson the boot. He has nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him.

My head is spinning!

I awoke this morning to this stunner. My first thought when I heard the news was “How in the name of international diplomacy does the president of the United States proceed to meet North Korean dictator/goofball Kim Jong Un with a brand new secretary of state?”

Trump and Tillerson aren’t exactly close. The president didn’t know him when he selected Tillerson to lead the State Department. Tillerson came from the world of big business. He is a straight-talking Texan. Remember the dust-up this past year when he called the president a “moron”? Hey, he didn’t deny saying it.

I guess it went downhill from there, as if it had nowhere to go.

I keep coming back to that five-letter word that so aptly describes the manner in which the president governs this country.

Chaos.

Trump says it’s all good. Everything is under control. The Man at the Top is going to handle it. He told us that “I, alone” can do anything.

Right!

In the meantime, the president has a foreign-policy team that seemingly has yet to be brought fully into the loop on what could arguably be the most significant bilateral meeting since President Ronald Reagan got rolled by Soviet chairman Mikhail Gorbachev in that summit in Iceland.

Hang on, man! This Trump-Kim meeting could get really weird.

International news

Expecting the unexpected in Trump-Kim summit

This might seem a bit tough to believe, but I truly am hoping for the best outcome from the planned meeting featuring Donald John Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Am I expecting such a result? Do I have any faith that the president of the United States can actually achieve anything of substance in this first-ever meeting with the North Korean dictator?

I’m likely to start laughing any minute now.

Trump says he relishes the notion of keeping the world on its toes. He wants to remain unpredictable. He doesn’t want to telegraph his punches.

This meeting was announced on a spur of the moment impulse from Trump, who reportedly accepted an invitation from Kim. He didn’t consult with anyone prior to announcing it, or so I’ve been led to understand.

Thus, the unpredictability factor has kicked into high gear.

Summits of this type — you know, the history-making events — usually come after a lot of groundwork has been laid by career diplomats and senior advisers. Trump prefers to fly solo on these matters, even when they involve a first-in-history meeting between a U.S. president and a North Korean tyrant.

How does one predict an outcome from such a meeting? How does one pretend to know what can come from it?

The White House keeps saying that Trump made no concessions to Kim, and that the president is going to lay down some preconditions before he sits down with the North Korean dictator. I keep circling back to this question: Does a U.S. president without a lick of experience at anything resembling international diplomacy know precisely what to demand of his adversary?

Trump’s reliance on his own instincts — to be candid — frightens me in the extreme. He hasn’t yet mastered the intricacies of governing here at home. He has developed at best a spotty record of accomplishment in his first year in the only public office he ever sought, let alone occupied.

So, now he’s planning to meet with a blustering, bellicose blowhard who, the more I think of it, sounds just like the president himself.

What in the world can we expect from this meeting? Not a damn thing! I am preparing to be surprised.

International news

‘I, alone’ appears to be more than a throw-away line

Donald John Trump’s surprise announcement of a planned meeting with Kim Jong Un underscores arguably the single deepest flaw in this president’s administration.

The president said he would surround himself with the “best people” to “make America great again.”

And during the 2016 Republican National Convention he stood at the lecturn and bellowed that “I, alone” can repair the things that ail this nation.

Fast-forward to this past week. The president accepted an invitation to meet with the North Korean dictator. Who did he inform of his decision? Was it his national security team? The vice president? The, um, secretary of state? None of the above.

He freelanced this one. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the nation’s top diplomat and the man who would need to know about such a momentous event before it is announced, was kept in the dark.

Donald Trump plans to meet with Kim no later than May. They’re supposed to talk about nuclear weapons and the North Koreans’ desire to become a bona fide nuclear power. The president is having none of it.

Where, though, is the pre-meeting preparation? How is this political novice — I refer to Trump — going to approach this event? Will he listen to a single word from the likes of Tillerson, or national security adviser H.R. McMaster? How about Vice President Mike Pence, who served in Congress before being elected Indiana governor?

My definition of “best people” no doubt differs from Trump’s use of the term. However, the president has assembled a team and has charged them with implementing policies that originate in the Oval Office.

It all begs the question, at least in my mind: Will the president let the “best people” do the things they must do or will be continue to act alone, pretending to be the world’s most indispensable human being?

International news

Maybe time is right after all … maybe

I dug a blog post out from nearly a year ago.

I had posited a notion that Donald J. Trump shouldn’t meet with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un. I said Kim wasn’t worth the time or the attention of the leader of the greatest nation on Earth.

Guess what. The president is hoping to meet no later than May with Kim. They’re going to talk about, oh let’s see, denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula? One can hope.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2017/05/dont-meet-with-the-dictator-mr-president/

I am not yet ready to fully endorse this planned summit. I remain highly skeptical of the president’s ability to negotiate with the goofball North Korean dictator. Moreover, I have grave doubt about whether the president’s foreign-policy team is able to provide him with the kind of intelligence he needs going into this meeting.

That brings me back to another point: questioning whether the president is able to accept, digest and accept the analysis that his team provides him.

I am backing off just a bit from my earlier declaration saying that Trump shouldn’t meet with Kim.

It’s just a bit.

International news

Get ready, Negotiator in Chief

Donald John Trump bragged about many of his so-called superlative traits while campaigning for the presidency.

One of those traits was that he is a first-class, top-tier negotiator. I mean, he said that’s how he built his real estate business into a multibillion-dollar empire.

Didn’t he say it? Umm, Yep. He sure did.

So, now we’re going to witness whether those alleged negotiating skills translate into statecraft.

Trump has accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The meeting will occur no later than May. The place is to be determined. In fact, so are many of the preconditions that usually accompany meetings of this magnitude.

Trump would be the first U.S. president to meet with any of the North Korean leaders since the end of the Korean War that, technically, hasn’t actually ended. The sides only signed an armistice; there’s no peace treaty.

So, Kim Jong Un has built a small — but still dangerous — cache of nukes that he has threatened to use against the United States, South Korea, Japan and anyone else.

Trump accepted the summit invitation, but reportedly has prepared not one lick for it. Lower-level prep hasn’t happened. There have been no high-level briefings by deputy secretaries of state or defense with their North Korean counterparts.

What gives? I am presuming that Trump — who famously declared that “I, alone” can do everything — is going to take the lead on the preparation leading up to this summit.

And will we get to witness arguably the sternest test yet on whether the president is the negotiator he has boasted of being. His track record here at home — the failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, providing the best example — isn’t so hot.

Maybe he’s gotten better at it, although the evidence doesn’t suggest that statecraft comes easily to this utter novice at politics and governing.

We can hope. Can’t we?