On Sunday Trump announced the U.S. would be scaling back long-planned military exercises with South Korea, just hours before they were to begin. Trump also made it clear he was doing this to please Kim Jong Un of North Korea. CNN:
“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.”
Trump doesn’t understand strategic alliances, and he doesn’t know history from dental floss. This move not only infuriated our good ally South Korea, it reinforced the growing world opinion that the U.S. can’t be counted on for anything.
And then Trump began telling people that he and Kim Jong Un had been in touch and would be meeting soon. Clearly, Trump wants to rekindle the bromance. But Kim Yo Jong, sister and close confidant of Kim Jong Un, issued a statement saying she is “completely unaware” her brother and Trump had been in contact. I don’t believe she said anything about a meeting.
Oh, and Trump also blabbed that North Korea has 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons. This was probably classified information, although knowing Trump, he got the number wrong. South Korea thinks he has more. But I kind of dimly remember that Trump’s meetings with Kim Jong Un during his first term were supposed to be about nuclear disarmament. His, not ours. In fact, back in 2018 Trump announced that Kim had agreed to “denuclearization.” I guess not.
One might ask what Trump is thinking. It may be that in Trump’s mind, his détente with Kim was a huge diplomatic success in his first term, and he could use another success right about now. Also, he may be pissed at South Korea.
Analysts say a summit with Kim, irrespective of its outcome, would be a useful feather in Trump’s cap, particularly as Washington’s unpopular war on Iran stands unresolved and his electoral pledge to end the Ukraine war remains unfulfilled.
Yet, Trump’s effort to cosy up to Kim may also have to do with exercising leverage vis-a-vis South Korea, in a typical example of the US president’s transactional approach to diplomacy.
“Trump may want to put pressure on South Korea … following [Seoul]’s reluctance to cooperate with the US in the Iran war and the slow progress in South Korean investment in the United States,” Yong-Chool Ha, director of the Center for Korean Studies at the Henry M Jackson School of International Studies in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera.
“This could be seen as a form of tit-for-tat diplomacy, despite the ongoing alliance between the two countries.”
It appears, though, that Kim doesn’t need Trump any more.
Kim has fully inserted himself into the war in Ukraine by supporting Putin’s war machine and has boosted his nuclear weapons program with Russian assistance. Buoyed by cryptocurrency heists and remote IT worker schemes, North Korean cyber criminals continue to generate considerable revenue for the regime. Compared to their previous round of diplomacy, Kim is in a far stronger negotiating position and sees little need for U.S. sanctions relief or a meeting with the unpredictable U.S. president. …
… Trump seems to think that diplomacy with the North Korean leader will be easier and smoother than the last time because Kim allegedly treated him with “great respect.”
Unfortunately for Trump, Kim is likely to ignore his overture. The war in Ukraine allowed Kim to reduce his economic dependence on China and expand his economy. By providing weapons and soldiers to Russia, Kim has reaped massive economic benefits. Kim has rejuvenated the domestic defense manufacturing base and expanded access to Russian markets. Since 2022, North Korea’s economy has grown by over 3 percent annually. Even North Korea’s rural regions, long seen by the regime as potential hotspots of discontent and thus neglected economically, have recently seen development, with new medical facilities being built across the country.
So Trump went to all the trouble to limit the joint military exercise to please Kim Jong Un, and he’s getting no response from Kim Jong Un. The Bromance is over. So sad. I hope the press corps asks Trump when he’s going to meet with Kim every day for the rest of his term. Rub it in.
In other news — I see the FBI has searched Eric Swalwell’s home and seized his phone. They are investigating sexual misconduct allegaations against him. I’m glad the FBI is taking sexual misconduct allegations seriously. Now, when will they visit people named in the Epstein files and search their homes?
In more other news — Do read Homeland Security Made a Big Claim About Noncitizen Voting. Now It Can’t Prove It. at The New York Times.
A month after the Trump administration declared without evidence that thousands of noncitizens had illegally registered to vote in Nevada, officials with the Department of Homeland Security were unable to substantiate the claim.
The administration claimed to have identified 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in four states, including an exact number of 15,903 in Nevada. But during a meeting last week with state election administrators, Homeland Security officials said they had identified just 185 potential noncitizens in the state so far, according to emails as well as recordings of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.
The federal officials said they were still considering 14,000 names for further review, according to one of the emails. In the virtual meeting, federal officials told Nevada that the nearly 16,000 they had originally identified represented “the ceiling” of potential noncitizens.
But the list the Homeland Security Department shared with Nevada is incomplete — it doesn’t even include names — and is nearly impossible to verify, according to files released by the secretary of state’s office. Nevada officials have requested more information, but the department has not yet offered it.
Do read the whole thing. It’s more than obvious that the DHS has no idea if there are any noncitizen voters anywhere. They threw out a big number and now they’re walking it back, carefully, without actually admitting they don’t have the proof.
What I'm thrilled about is that Trump's bromance with Kim is the perfect rebuttal to his own charge from a couple weeks ago that Democrats are communists. Nothing like your enemy destroying their own ammunition.
If I may add to the earlier post about Nathalie Harp – David Pakman had someone put together a string of stuff she has said while being a talking head on OAN, in Do people realize how insane this woman is?
What comes through for me is that she's an utter child. Maybe everybody on OAN is, but I've never come across someone in an adult body with such childish reasoning. Someone else in Trump's circle said that she's a loner – and it's not hard to see why.
Lucas Bean talks about this, in MAGA Thinks Like Children
The Ukraine mess has been a gift from heaven for Kim and the DPRK. A formal defence treaty with the Russian Federation, increased trade, and on-the-job training for the DPRK military.
When I first heard reports of 12K North Korean troops in the Kursk Oblast I thought it was your normal Ukrainian propaganda but then I realized not only was it real but a brilliant move on the parts of both Russia and the DPRK. The recent addition of 50,000 DPRK troops seems to indicate the idea worked.
Russia really did not need those initial 12,000 troops and the difficulties of integrating them into Russian operations must have been great but what countries now have regular troops with real experience in the new and evolving style of war? DPRK, Russia, Ukraine.
I remember thinking after 9/11 that one could make a good case for George W Bush being an Al Qaeda asset and Prof. S. M. Marandi, an Iranian political commentator remarked the other day that one would think US policy in West Asia was being dictated from Tehran.
US diplomatic policy over the last few years has been extremely successful, just not for the USA. It has managed to form an interesting and powerful political and economic block of China, Iran, North Korea, ad Russia. Metternich, himself, would be impressed.
To be honest, listening to those clips of Harp does not seem to show her any crazier than any number of Trump supporters. This is not saying much for the sanity of Trump supporters of course. She, quite likely, is crazier than a bedbug on the subject of Trump bus she seems to have lots of company.
The Lucas Bean video is interesting and I think a couple of his arguments are based on concrete psychological research. However, Bean's talk can pretty easily be synthesized out of work by Piaget and by Tversky and Kahnaman. It is not going to apply solely to MAGA types.
I'd be happier if I could find any trace of Jaime Lewera at Yale or on Google Scholar. For some reason I am having a problem accessing PubMed.
Note: I am not sure the text in the Bean video gives the correct spelling of "Lewera" but there is no listing in the Yale Psychology Departments list of professors, Post-Docs or graduate students even vaguely like that. I really would like confirmation that this person exists.
The truth is quite a quest and an unsurmountable one for some republicans. That many eligible voters don't vote is a truth they seem to understand. Yet, these same people fail to understand that few ineligible people even attempt to vote and fewer yet attempt to do so with illegal intent.
Often legitimate voters vote out republicans. Often republicans tell themselves and others that those elections are rigged. Mostly they do so with no or faulty evidence. They may see breath mints as flash drives or have other borderline hallucinations. They think perception is truth as if magic tricks are real, as are illusions and other perceptual distortions. The truth is, that they fail to see what others can easily see. They are fooled by their own misperceptions. They start to believe their lies, lies of their own making.
It brings to mind the old Starkist Tuna ads, Charly could never accept the idea he was not good enough to be chosen.
Like the ones they’re putting on the November ballot with few exceptions.
Eight years ago, when Trump met Kim in Singapore, the USA was still clearly the leading World Power. North Korea had nukes, but not many, and no truly intercontinental missiles, so they had no credible deterence against the possibility of a US attack.
Now, the USA is a visibly declining World Power. We have ceded industrial leadership to China, and we are quickly falling to 2nd place in Tech prowess. Militarily and economically, we are still the only truly Global Power, but Trump is in the process of ending that, too.
The stupid war on Iran has suddenly exposed many different US weaknesses:
1. Latte (sic!) Stage Capitalism leaves us with a hollow industrial base, unable to produce weapons fast enough;
2. Ignoring Diplomacy for decades means we're fighting alone, with a logistics tail stretched thin;
3. Internal political corruption ties us to Israel, giving Netanyahu the power to push/pull us into this damn war;
4. Decades of Tax Cuts for the Rich leaves us with crumbling infrastructure – physical, political, and social;
5. Decades of propping up Wall Street has created financial bubbles which are about to pop.
Trump isn't entirely responsible for all of these, but he has certainly accelerated everything, pedal to the metal, straight downhill. Biden at least tried to do something about our infrastructure, but Trump has reversed whatever the GOP (and their Federalist hacks on the SC) couldn't block.
Who can be surprised that a tin-pot dictator like Kim Jong Un can now just ignore us?
@John Kane – I suspect "Lewera" is a text-rendering misspelling. Bean has (weekly?) live sessions (youtube? Facebook?) and so it shouldn't be too hard to ask him directly.
Thanks.
Kim IMO thinks strategically. I'm sure he has his vanity, but I don't think he's that impressed by Trump bowing and scraping in the hope of a quotable compliment. The same can't be said of Trump. The driving farce behind this is that S. Korea did not jump in to support Trump in the war with Iran. Trump wants to get even by threatening to cozy up with their enemy.
Kim wants to fly under the radar as far as the US Congress is concerned. He doesn't want public discussions of how many nukes and their ICBM capabilities. Trump is an idiot but the global press will highlight their role in supporting Putin in Ukraine (for cash) with weapons and troops.
The relationship between Kim and Donnie isn't a whole lot about the relations between the US and N. Korea. I don't think DJT can just lift sanctions without Congress and I think the Senate will pass on normalizing relations without major concessions. The call from Donnie was to suggest a photo-op for Trump and the global spotlight can only do Kim harm. So, I agree. Nobody picked up when Trump called.
Brings an old mental image to mind. Back in the old days of the 'Tonight Show' Johnny Carson always did some stand-up. Sometimes he bombed, which was also funny. But he'd be fumbling, hoping the next joke would turn things around, or the next. You could almost hear the plea, "Make the next one work." That's where I see the WH and Trump as his popularity (or lack of) falls into numbers like Trump has never seen. Nothing is working and he's hauling out old bits that he think worked once upon a time. That's Kim, for example.
I read a piece that the WH is afraid Trump's approval will drop into the low 20s before the election and Republicans will avoid Trump like a leper. Trump has the awareness of dismal failures like Hoover. Part of Trump's obsession with monuments and putting his name on stuff is his fear of the permanent reputation in history of being an idiot, a crook, and a failure. I think that ship has sailed.
Warren Buffet said in 1998:
Before then often stated his maxim:
Manitoba's Premier Wab Kinew said recently:
And in this post:
Which all fits the notion that the best way to deal with Trump is not to deal with Trump at all if you can. The growing corollary to that seems to be: If, you have to deal with him do so with great caution, being fully aware it may not be honored.
The CFTA of 1917 was made in the Trump administration. Today a trade war rages it seems. You can kind of see how that one got honored. The Canadians did not seem to renege. Something changed though.