Trump screws up in Singapore

June 12, 2018 • 6:41 pm

Of course Trump wasn’t going to get Kim Jong-un to give up his nukes; that was never on the table. There is a lot of talk of how Trump gave away the farm (no more joint U.S./South Korean military exercises) and got precious little in return, while the DPRK got a propaganda triumph. Still, that doesn’t really change much, although it makes Trump look ridiculous and weak. But we knew that anyway. No, the biggest screwup he made was coddling the world’s worst dictator and, according to the New York Times, making statements like this:

Trump praised Kim in the news conference and, astonishingly, even adopted North Korean positions as his own, saying that the United States military exercises in the region are “provocative.” That’s a standard North Korean propaganda line. Likewise, Trump acknowledged that human rights in North Korea constituted a “rough situation,” but quickly added that “it’s rough in a lot of places, by the way.” (Note that a 2014 United Nations report stated that North Korean human rights violations do “not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”)

Incredibly, Trump told Voice of America that he had this message for the North Korean people: “I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well.”

That’s just palaver, of course, but it’s a craven and disgusting series of statements. Kim Jong-un wants to do right by the North Korean people? Who is Trump kidding? Dear Leader wants to crush them under his boot, and is responsible for starving most of them and killing many of them.

Call me naive, but I still cherish the American ideal of fostering freedom and liberty throughout the world. When you laud the world’s worst dictator in a way like this, the ideal is gone—at least until Trump is gone.

“It’s rough in a lot of places, by the way.”  Ceiling Cat help us.

102 thoughts on “Trump screws up in Singapore”

  1. He’s probably thinking beach front Trump hotels built with slave labor supplied by Kim Jong-un. It’s, as always, all about him and what he wants!

    1. > He’s probably thinking beach front Trump hotels…

      Trump actually said as much. Quote: “They have great beaches,” and “You could have the best hotels in the world right there.”

  2. I think what you are hearing is someone who lives in another world and does not really relate to this one. This guy, this Donald, is truly in a mental state that indicates he has no business where he is. It is as scary as ever and the proper news media needs to start talking about this. If the republicans will not stand up and get this loon out then the media, the public needs to do it for them. We have had stupid presidents before and some a little off, but this guy is gone.

          1. Thanks, Matt. I did see Downfall (and the mant take-offs) but had forgotten that line.

      2. I believe you are getting around to an appropriate and similar event. Hitler was crazy in his way and many people paid for it. Wish I spoke German.

          1. I don’t speak or understand French even though my last name if French. But then I was adopted.

    2. In a previous post regarding Trump, I said that we ought to admit that the man is crazy. Even here in the reasoned world of WEIT, several people replied, ‘oh, no, no, no. . . .’ He this or that, a buffoon or a charlatan, an oaf and a dumbass, but not crazy. It’s clear to me, however, that this is exactly what he is.

  3. Trump reacts personally and doesn’t really represent the people of our country even in his own mind. I suspect that Kim Jong Un’s outlook is similar. As you note, whenever someone points out past history of the US relationship with NK, he basically blows it off as if to say, “Well I didn’t see any of that.” or “That’s all in the past.” Fox News was right for once when they said “that meeting between the two dictators”. Of course it is up to us to prevent Trump becoming a true dictator.

      1. Isn’t that how the gun nuts justify the Second Amendment? That one day they will need their gunz to overthrow a tyrannical government?

        Come on Americans, the world is watching and waiting!

        1. I was talking about voting, not shooting the place up.

          Those 2nd Amendment types that keep their guns in order to overthrow a tyrannical US government really scare me. Of course, they would have no chance against our government if it is was running normally. But what if Trump sees that he is going to lose the reins of power and calls on his followers to rise up? It is perhaps hard to imagine the GOP going along with that but look how meek most of them are now. It is clear that the only thing that matters to most of them is staying in power. Is this how the US as we know it comes to an end?

          1. It occurs to me, too, that once Trump is out of the way, there ought to be a way to establish laws that would prevent another Trump in the future. I know under some systems, they can hold snap elections which would allow voters a kind of do-over. Such a mechanism would have to avoid the trap that the GOP finds itself in – supporting someone they might actually loath.

          2. “…the trap GOP finds itself in…”

            I wish I could share your optimism. I can’t. The GOP is, mainly, the voters who participate in Republican primaries. Far from loathing, those people love tRump. They aren’t trapped at all. They have Fox News and talk radio to keep them in line for more insanity.

          3. I doubt they could do anything so radical. Even getting rid of the electoral college has always been considered next to impossible.

            Trump and the GOP have exploited gaps in the constitution and gone against many rules that were merely conventions. To name one good example, which was actually before Trump’s time, when Barack Obama was supposed to choose a new Supreme Court Justice, the GOP prevented it for an entire year. Perhaps another area is voter registration. Every GOP-dominated state is playing all kinds of games to suppress minority and poor voting. Perhaps this can be stopped at the federal level.

  5. It’s going to be rough all over the west if Trump keeps fucking with the world economy and starting trade wars with allies.

    1. I thought about Canada as a place to relocate but it’s so damn cold up there. Now that Trump is attempting to ruin that economy as well, not much point.

      1. Its only cold in winter and Vancouver hardly gets snow. It’s the duty of every Canadian living in Vancouver to post pictures of all the stupid flowers they get in February while the rest of us are digging out of the latest pile of snow the snow plough just dumped in our driveway. Besides I love in the sunny south at the same latitude as Northern California.

        1. Yes, as long as it’s not something Trump can slap a tariff on. However, I am old and no longer doing that stuff.

          1. Went to a regatta just west of Toronto this past weekend, and just as soon as I crossed the Lew-Queen Bridge, I slapped my “Impeach Trump” sticker on the car. Nobody tried to run me off the road, so my plan worked great, eh? Luckily, I remembered to take it off before I got to the US barrier on my return. Good times.

  6. I promise I will be a good little boy and not murder any of my relations anymore…Kim Jing Un.

  7. Kim Jong un was always going to and will always run rings round Trump. Does Trump have any advisers he actually listens to? They should have stopped him.

    Kim may be a loathsome despot but he is also intelligent, he spent a long time at college/uni in Switzerland so is unlike his dad and grandfather in that he is more worldly and educated, whereas Trump is a fool. I have no idea if he had any real education, if he did it does not show.

    2. Kim was not at a university in Switzerland. He started school there when he was 9 years old. He surely had to learn the dialect of Berne and maybe even standard German, while I am not sure that Trump can speak any language besides of English.

      1. I believe he attended an English-speaking school in Switzerland. I did, too, as it happens. Though-be-it a different one.

        1. Interresting. According to the Swiss press and an interview to his former teacher, Kim attended the public school at Liebefeld, near Berne. German is the official language there. Maybe he attended the public school during a few years and then switched to a private one?

          1. My comment came off more authoritative than it should have. I don’t really know about his specific school and just winged my comment after a brief google. My assumption is that he attended a private school, which seems to have been incorrect.

            Someday I’ll learn to not reply so fast. 😉

      2. I am quite sure that Trump doesn’t speak any language besides English, and that badly.

        1. Has he ever had a conversation with Sarah Palin? A recording of that would be priceless!

  10. I’m so glad the North Koreans finally have a leader like Jong-Un. He has really great feelings for them!

    Fuck. The guy speaks like a child.

    1. BJ, you are too young to remember James Earl Carter III hugging Leonid Brezhnev. (I remember it vividly.) Trump’s behavior here is not as egregious but it’s getting there.

      2. I think the more apt comparison would be to George W. Bush’s 2001 meeting with Vladimir Putin where he “looked the man in his eye [and] got a sense of his soul.”

        But why stop there? There was also the lovefest at the Eagle’s Nest that handed over the Sudetenland and resulted in “peace in our time.”

        1. Bush Jr. walking around holding hands with Saudi princes was fairly gag-worthy too. Though of course they are our allies.

    2. To say that he has the vocabulary of a fourth-grader is insulting to fourth-graders.

  11. Trump has no North Korea expert, no ambassador to South Korea, no nuclear disarmament expert, a braintrust of Bolton and Pompeo, and “I don’t think I have to prepare very much.”

    What could go wrong?

  13. One might suspect that Trump was there to pick up tips on how to become another “Dear Leader”.

    1. There’s nothing der Fuhrer would like better, than to have the power that Kim Jong Bun has.
      He “Bun” has stitched him up like a kipper, his Grandaddy signed an agreement with the West to commit to de-nuclearisation way back in 1968. Hows that working out ?

  14. My oldest brother, who served in Korea in the U.S. Army as a young ma, is probably turning over in his grave. If you hear what sounds like an earthquake, it’s him and his compatriots. I am ashamed of our “glorious leader”.

    1. South Korea should feel a bit of shame in this as well. After all they kind of started this round although I doubt they knew the crazy they were dealing with.

    2. Trump claimed in one statement that the parents of GIs lost during the Korean War were beseeching him to bring back their sons’ remains. Those people would all be well into their hundreds now, right?

      Trump will say anything he believes will aggrandize himself in the moment he says it, with no regard whatever to whether what he’s saying is true, or even whether it makes a lick of sense.

        1. A sack with those specific contents would actually serve some potentially useful purpose, while Trump on the other hand does not.

  15. I was going to write something sarcastic here, but what’s the point.

    Depressed.

    1. No, do it! Don’t deprive the world of a chance to catch an earful of sarcasm. Never do that!

  16. Kim would be absolutely insane to give up his nukes, seeing what happened to Saddam and (as some Trump hanger-on so egregiously reminded us all) Gaddafi. And seeing how keen Trump was to renege on the Iran deal.

    I don’t think Kim is insane. He’s either a bit flaky or the bluster is a put-on and the whole saga is his carefully calculated attempt to boost the importance of North Korea and get sanctions eased.

    (It follows that if anybody gets a Peace Prize over this summit (as blathered by some of our more brain-dead TV talk-show hosts) it should go to the person who set it up, which is not Trump but Kim Jong-un.)

    I don’t think it matters much if North Korea gives up its nukes. Kim knows if he ever launches one, he’s dead. On the other hand, if Trump ever launches one, he’ll probably win the next election. Guess which one I think is the bigger threat to humanity and world peace.

    cr

    1. Sorry. I don’t think it matters much if North Korea *doesn’t* give up its nukes, either.

      cr

    2. Nah – if anyone gets a Peace Prize related to Korean developments it should be South Korean president Moon. The Trump/Kim meeting is a sideshow in my view; most of the real value will come from the two Koreas ratcheting down tensions.

  17. There is a lot of talk of how Trump gave away the farm (no more joint U.S./South Korean military exercises) and got precious little in return, while the DPRK got a propaganda triumph. Still, that doesn’t really change much

    I think I disagree. The ending of the joint exercises with South Korea came as a surprise to South Korea (as I understand). The DPRK has successfully driven a wedge between its enemy and its enemy’s strongest ally and they had to make no real concessions to get it done.

    1. Trump even adopted Kim’s language referring to the joint defense exercises as “war games” and calling them a “needless provocation” to the DPRK.

  18. Oh, and by Trump standards, Trump didn’t ‘screw up in Singapore’. He seemed to be hogging the limelight as usual (at least in the news clips we saw), but not so overpoweringly that Kim was forced to object. He managed not to insult Kim and start World War III. Surely that’s a success.

    I’ll admit to a feeling of profound relief.

    (Note that I have come to a different standard in judging Trump from that for everybody else. If anything Trump does, doesn’t immediately make things far worse, wreck something, or turn into a shitfight, I regard that as a success or at least a disaster averted).

    cr

      1. Yep. I’ve just recalled Trump’s little effort at the G7 and the subsequent extraordinary un-diplomacy of Trump and his hirelings re Canada.

        cr

    2. He screwed up by any standard – even yours.

      Read Jeremy @ comment #17.

      He has given Kim status on the world stage, he has given endless sound [& picture] bites for Kim to feed back at his own people. Kim has got Trump to cancel the yearly ‘wargames’ [almost certainly without input from South Korea]. All this cost Kim eff all in return.

      In one week Trump has dismantled his European back channels [nobody can confidently say in the US gov’t that they represent the gov’t position any more], he’s shown that his diplomatic corps is irrelevant now & he’s indicated that his word is written on perforated tissue paper.

      He has devalued the reputation of the USA.

      1. As you might have noted from my reply to Merilee, the G7 – Canada thing is a massive screw-up. If the Drumpf had made a similar screw-up in Singapore we’d all be in trouble.

        Hence my relief that he didn’t. The reputation of the USA is so low by now (largely due to Trump) it could hardly sink any lower, I don’t think Singapore made it any worse.

        As for the wargames, they can surely be resumed at a moments’ notice. If any country’s future security depended critically on them being suspended permanently – would you take Trump’s word for it? As you say, his word is written on perforated tissue paper and we’ve known that for many months.

        cr

  19. Cheezes! At least Neville Chamberlain actually believed all that stuff about Hitler being not really so bad.

    Trumpster only cares about his own self-aggrandizement.

    1. “At least Neville Chamberlain actually believed all that stuff about Hitler being not really so bad.”

      A wry and true observation, despite this ridiculous blather from Trump after the meeting: ‘”I do trust him, yeah,” the President said in an interview Tuesday with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.’ When the pot calls the kettle white, there’s a real problem.

  20. There’s no one Trump admires or desires to be like more than an oppressive dictator.

  21. I saw something a few months back that proposed the hypothesis that all Jong-Un’s machinations in consolidating power (the killing of relatives, etc.) might (repeat, MIGHT) actually be a process of getting rid of people who would be a threat to him if he genuinely tried to open up North Korea. Some of them were said to be power hungry and some just might be desperate because in a more moderate state they would be exposed or left out in the cold.

    If North Korea opens up there will definitely be some powerful people left out in the cold.

    He certainly operates in a very strange kind of world that can make a person both cautious and ruthless. He seems to have consolidated his power.

    I would not want to bet the farm on guessing correctly how this will all turn out.

    2. It’s a nice idea except Kim knows he will never be safe ruling in a more liberal society. If despots start giving out fridges, microwaves & educations to his slaves they will kill him eventually. The big stick of the concentration camps, the Stasi-like system of people spying on the people who spy on the people can’t be broken, the living god veneration: that’s his life insurance internally & the WMDs perform the same job externally.

  23. A great headline:

    “Kim Jong-Un prepares for sit-down with Trump by bringing his own toilet to Singapore.”

  24. “…the American ideal of fostering freedom and liberty throughout the world.”
    Has this ever existed? My impression is rather that the USA have always been fostering their colonial power throughout the world.

    1. Tell it to the American GIs who died in the Battle of Anzio to liberate the soft-underbelly of Europe from the bootheel of Fascism. Which colonies did the US obtain outta that ordeal?

        1. I can be pretty harsh on the US of A’s history of foreign adventurism myself. But I get a touch defensive when anyone perceived to be an outsider does the same.

          Tribalism’s a bitch, I suppose. 🙂

      3. Americans historically revising Indians, Brits & Canadians out of yet another WWII bloodbath? 🙂

        1. Yes, come to think of it, mate, there were some non-English-speaking allied troops there, too. 🙂

    2. Not sure I would call it “colonial” but “making sure the other country’s government was friendly to the US by any means available in the name of freedom and liberty throughout the world”.

  25. Trump has no perspective or he’s trolling the entire country. Here are this morning’s outraging tweets:

    “Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

    “Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer – sleep well tonight!”

    No longer a threat? Sleep well tonight?

    1. They are also useful in the face of a hostile power that has threatened to destroy several cities in the US. Thank goodness that power is no longer hostile and has turned on a dime.

  27. So, Kim Jong Un gets a boost in international status, from universally despised to nearly so? And gets kind words from Trump? Big freaking deal! I think Trump’s recklessness is a boon here – he gave away a meaningless (in the real world) gift of psychological importance to the other side: joint military exercises. That’s exactly what you *should* do to open a peace process. And yes, it’s meaningless, since conquering South Korea by conventional arms has long been beyond the North’s capabilities.

    The conventional wisdom on North Korea isn’t wisdom. Ignoring the prevailing views among educated people is usually a bad move, but in this case Trump’s instincts might just work out. Not that N. Korea is likely to give up the bomb, but I’m with infiniteimprobabilit there – it’s not necessary for this to work out in our favor. It’s enough that N. Korea stops sinking S. Korean boats and shelling its islands.

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