I’ve been pretty up front about the fact that I’ve always been deeply ambivalent about The Donald.
But this line was almost Reaganesque:
And for all the lace undies’ set’s caterwauling about The Donald’s style, it’d be hard to miss the impact he’s had. Glenn Reynolds notices:
FOR ALL THE TALK ABOUT TRUMP BEING AN INCOMPETENT TODDLER, I notice that Saudi Arabia is liberalizing at a previously unimaginable pace, other Asian countries are siding with us against China, and now Trump’s going to meet with Kim Jong Un, which if he were a Democrat would be celebrated as a masterstroke no matter what the results.
The idea that after a year of saber rattling, Kim Jong Un is suddenly making nice with the ROK is completely novel…
…for whose utterly ignorant of history and in dealing with tyrants and bullies.
Lat arrivals are also welcome. Your Trumpkin card is in the mail 😉
Oh, and by the way, let’s not forget the 313k new jobs.
Well, North Korea signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985. They also signed the Agreed Framework in 1994. Agreements mean something different over there.
I’d like to be in the room when they start exchanging tips on hair styling.
Your Trumpkin card is in the mail
I’ll remain a “distrust but verify” guy. Pleasant surprises are…pleasant.
I’d like to be in the room when they start exchanging tips on hair styling.
Hah!
Well, c’mon Mitch! You are missing the obvious – none of this is sTrumpet’s doing, he is just collecting dividends on all that great work by Boooshes, Clintoon, 0bumbler and last but not least, Rodman. You gotta give the Worm his due, Mitch!
I’ll remain a “distrust but verify” guy. Pleasant surprises are…pleasant.
I’ve had more pleasant surprises in one year w/ Trump than all the other years back to Reagan combined. In fact, it was Trump that brought me back to the fold of a(n ostensibly) good citizen; prior to his nomination I was of the “burn it all down” cult.
Seems to me from all the reports that Trump had little to do with this. It appears to be something that North and South Korean leadership brokered.
Of course, non-involvement never prevented Trump from taking credit where credit was not due.
ALL the reports? Wow. Just wow. A “cause” never results in an “effect” in Shvonder-eTASS part of the universe. But then we ALL know that their talking points never stray from too far from the plantation and sTrumpet would never be given credit no matter what he does. Keep trolling cupcakes. Keep digging.
Seems to me from all the reports that Trump had little to do with this
Odd then that Un would even invite Trump.
The reality is that both Trump and Kim Jong Un have backed themselves into an very untenable corner with all the bloviating that’s gone on. That they should meet and make some attempt to save face is not totally unreasonable.
Let’s manage our expectations and continue to watch this bizzaro reality show play out.
The reality is that both Trump and Kim Jong Un …
But you just wrote that Trump had very little to do with this. Why meet? And by invite, no less. I mean, according to you (and your reports) Trump had nothing to do with this development and yet still finds himself in an untenable position is due to his own bloviating. So, the two Koreas could just continue meeting and discussing and reap the success without the need for Trump. While Trump is someplace else, a corner perhaps, trying to save face.
Do I have this correct?
Trump has given away the prize of a summit without getting anything in return except for the wrong headed expectations of his supporters.
Meanwhile, Kim is treated as an equal and wins an incalculable boost to his own prestige at home and abroad.
Feel free however to chase shiny objects and laser pointers.
Trump has given away the prize of a summit without getting anything in return except for the wrong headed expectations of his supporters.
But he shouldn’t even get in to the summit because he’s done nothing. Even tho’ he needs to try to save face. From a corner. While he gives away prizes.
Meanwhile, Kim is treated as an equal and wins an incalculable boost to his own prestige at home and abroad.
So calling Kim Rocketman is treating him as an equal? Or is that part of the backing into the corner? Or a prize?
Feel free however to chase shiny objects and laser pointers.
All I’m trying to do is make sense of your babbling. My mistake, I guess.
It sounds as if both you and Trump believes that it is his toughness alone that has brought Kim to the negotiating table and that, once there, his unique force of personality and his “genius” for the deal will coax Kim into giving up his nukes.
It doesn’t appear to bother Trump that he has no ambassador to Seoul, or that he has just lost his main expert on North Korea. Is Team Trump even aware of all the back-channel diplomacy by Kissinger before Nixon made his trip to China? Trump should have waited for the results of exploratory negotiations before rushing in.
7 more years of Moar Winning to go, how you like them apples Dunning_Kruger?
It sounds as if both you and Trump believes that it is his toughness alone that has brought Kim to the negotiating table and that, once there, his unique force of personality and his “genius” for the deal will coax Kim into giving up his nukes.
Who are you responding to? Are there voices in your head that won’t stop unless you respond from CA to the comments section of a blog in MN?
There is no “win” for Trump. Yesterday, both Tillerson and a State Department spokesperson said there are no talk planned or even talks about talks. Trump was just played by Kim. All Kim wants is to be recognized and Trump just gave him a massive platform on the global stage.
Trump has failed at every attempt to negotiate. The Tariffs are a prime example. Tariffs for everyone now appears tariffs for no one as he keeps exempting countries. The Tariff announcement was just another show that appears to be meaningless and with no teeth.
“Meanwhile, Kim is treated as an equal”
Is THAT what Trump’s been doing?
Huh.
MBerg: Two individuals meet to negotiate. One gains prestige by attending the meeting no matter the outcome. The other one makes extravagant claims about his unique negotiating acumen and stakes his reputation on reaching a ‘deal’. He will suffer humiliation if he fails to do so.
Which person can afford to walk away empty handed and which person would the “Art of the Deal” predict the winner in this negotiation?
Trump validates and advances Kim’s goal of being recognized as a nuclear state. You don’t give away a presidential meeting for nothing. What did we get for this? Nothing.
swiftee is correct, Dunning-Kruger is alive and well and lives in Shvonder-eTASS heads. Good thing there is so much room in there, were brains used to be.
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
This alone is all you need to know about how this meeting will go.
I suppose emery got his talking points from The Obama administration via the NY Times:
Evan S. Medeiros, an Asia adviser to President Barack Obama, said that any direct talks would elevate Mr. Kim and legitimize him. “We got nothing for it. And Kim will never give up his nukes,” Mr. Medeiros said. “Kim played Moon and is now playing Trump.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/us/politics/north-korea-kim-jong-un-trump.html
The Obama administration & Medeiros failed to reign in Kim. Why get advice on N Korea from a failure? Unless you are pushing a narrative, not writing “news.”
It’s simply a lie that Trump “got nothing.” North Korea has agreed to a moratorium on nuclear & missile tests leading up to the meeting.
“The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior” applies to the NY Times and blog commenters, too.
Trump should put Jimmy Carter’s on the no-fly list until after things are resolved one way or another with Kim – otherwise there is the risk that Carter will repeat his 1994 performance where he scuppered Clinton’s efforts to establish a workable resolution to the Korean War.
the Emery-Collective™ is terrified that Trump may succeed with North Korea where 11 previous Presidents have failed.
McA, there is only so much WinningTM our shining Dunning-Kruger example can take. They cannot bear US succeeding in anything, other than moving towards soci@lism.
MP, there was no doubt Shvonder-eTASS was copy and pasting. Usually it is swiftee who finds the source of talking points, but today you get the gold star.
Do not be too hasty in your congratulations for Trump. It is likely that NK has completed its current aims with regards to testing its nuclear and ballistic capabilities and now needs another period of R&D to consolidate those gains before testing again with the next generations. In this period it would be wise to make conciliatory gestures to take the international heat off. Bringing in the narcissist Trump who will be desperate to show his “deal-making” capabilities may give them a big win.
The Emery-Collective™(Dunning-Kruger Support Group) asserts:
“Do not be too hasty… “
Which would be an absolutely correct assessment of the USA-NORK talks IF Obama was still President, and negotiating with all the skill and aplomb he was noted for with Iran, then “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.” would be a correct paradigm for evaluation.
However Emery-Collective™, Trump isn’t Obama so expect different and better results.
You don’t know what you are talking about, Emery. The tell is that you are simply making assertions.
A tell from the Madeiros quote is “. . . Kim will never give up his nukes . . .”
It was Madeiros’ job to get Kim to give up his nukes. Epic fail, during the Obama years did Kim not only keep his nukes, he expanded his nuclear & ICBM testing.
You run into this attitude time & again with the Obama people. “We keep giving X concessions, and yet the behavior of X persists.”
Obama’s foreign policy has been chock-a-block with epic failures. Russia, Libya, Syria, Iran, and, of course, North Korea.
If Trump has a guiding principle in foreign policy, it seems to be “the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.”
Excellent propaganda for both sides for varying reasons. I don’t believe the North Koreans are one little bit sincere and as for Trump….
Since Jill Abramson made it fashionable with her announcement this past week that she carries an Obama doll in her purse, the Emery-Collective™ has been waiting anxiously for their back ordered Obama Doll 12-pack to arrive from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Barack-Obama-Playing-Ukulele-Bobble/dp/B004HHA8N6/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1520712439&sr=8-9&keywords=obama+doll
As Cholla once opined “What a bunch of morphodites!”
kel 😂
When you don’t know enough about a topic to come to a conclusion, look at the metadata.
We know that since the Vietnam War, the media (& the educated elite) have a tendency to believe (irrationally) that in international conflicts, the enemy’s hand is a straight flush and the American hand is a pair of deuces. They did this in Vietnam, the cold war, the Gulf War & the Iraq War. Look at the words of Obama’s man Madeiros “Kim will never give up his nukes.”
Kim Il Jong is in a precarious position. If he loosens the grip he has on his own people, he falls. If the Chinese want him out, he falls. If his generals or his intelligence services revolt, he falls. Kim’s reported execution of people in his inner circle is not a sign of strength.
The US has a much stronger hand then Kim. If he attacks us, Kim’s regime falls. The same is not true if we attack North Korea. Our allies have isolated Kim diplomatically and economically.
“The best predictor of future behavior is past behaior.” Trump & his team do not behave as past administrations have behaved. The results won’t be the same, I hope.
Kinda funny in a sad way, or sad in a funny way (not sure which), the denial by certain commenters in this thread and refusal to acknowledge reality — and blaming others for the fact that reality refuses to align with their imagination.
The reality is Trump accepted a non invitation to a summit with Kim Jong Un on an clueless impulse and the White House now trying to make it unhappen.
Emery-Collective™: speaking of a disconnect from reality – what you are caressing lovingly is NOT an Obama doll
kel: It will be an amazing day when NK gives up nukes & Mexico pays for the wall on the same day.
Woolly: Is this Trump’s Nixon-to-China moment — a bold geopolitical gambit establishing diplomatic primacy — or is it an aging Ronald Reagan’s Iran Contra fall from grace and slide into irrelevancy?
First, let’s presume that Kim can trade away his long-distance intercontinental missile capability for maintenance of the status quo on the Korean peninsula which would guarantee his regime’s continued existence as a personal fief. One presumes regime maintenance is Kim’s overriding goal. Why would this work? North Korea sits in the middle of some of the most attractive geopolitical targets in the world in nearby Japan, South Korea, and North Korea. These are easily threatened. What Kim needs for his blackmail to work is a nuclear capability married to a capable short-distance missile technology. In contrast, long-range missiles threaten increased US involvement which increases greatly risk to his basic objective — regime maintenance.
Giving way to the Americans on long-distance missiles costs Kim “nothing” and might result in some agreement to get the Americans to remove any nuclear weapons they have on the Korean peninsula. (Since the US strategic missiles can obliterate any square meter of anything anywhere on the earth, this only slightly improves the overall situation but does improve the local neighborhood.)
Will a missile giveaway be enough to get sanctions eased? Or does Kim need to go to partial nuclear or full nuclear to secure removing enough sanctions to allow his regime to breathe without it opening up to the destabilizing influences of a true opening to the world community. Being the Hermit Kingdom is also key to regime survival.
Another historical example might be then Vice President Richard Nixon’s famous kitchen debate with Russian Premier Khrushchev in Moscow in the late 1950s which gave Nixon worldwide publicity and great credibility with his base back in America that he was a tough international statesmen and knew how to handle the Russians (as always the American public will buy all sorts of malarkey). This suggests a probable outcome that Kim gives something–immediate lessening of tensions on the Korea peninsula and agreement to quit lobbing missiles over Japan, etc) to Trump to get the Americans to go away for the time being without a whole lot else changing.
One must also point out real differences between Trump and Nixon. Nixon was quite smart, a veteran of political intrigue (not its beneficiary), and he had the highly capable Henry Kissinger in his camp. Quality pre-summit diplomacy delivered a spectacular public relations and substantive triumph to Richard Nixon. Does this administration (i) understand the need for quality pre-summit diplomacy, and (ii) do they have any first-tier diplomats in the stable?
In contrast, Trump’s current team looks like the Ship of Fools that sailed the Reagan administration into the Iran Contra crisis. A highly militarized national security team (now a general, then an admiral) while the State Department was out of the loop (as famously was Vice President George H.W. Bush). With regard to the White House, just who is in charge here? Is the national-foreign policy team of Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, and McMaster the policy guiding team here, or is the recently ascendant nationalist team (represented by Lighthizer-Ross-Navarro and their ilk) with their penchant for unilateralism influential? Or will the Americans embark for the Far East divided, a favorite management technique of Trump’s management-by-chaos style?
All the participants in the coming drama have an interest in dialing down tensions on the Korean peninsula and getting American bluster to go away until another day. Look for something like that as an outcome. Something spectacular beyond that? Unlikely.
Real achievement takes real work. Like Trump in the Vietnam war, Trump will be AWOL from serious effort in this struggle.
A while back the Emery-Collective™ claimed to be a Chemical Engineer, a dubious claim to be sure, but given the collective’s penchant for plagiarism it is easier to understand how this witless bunch made it through college.
“Like Trump in the Vietnam war, Trump will be AWOL from serious effort in this struggle.”
So if I understand your thesis correctly, anyone (Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton) who did not serve in the armed forces is not fit to be President? yes?
As to Trump’s management style, Trump is using a paradigm pioneered by Abraham Lincoln. I would be interested in the Collective’s critique of Lincoln’s tenure.
Let’s see how this pans out. Way too soon to draw any conclusions, given the unstable characters involved.
But you could not get predictions and conclusions for brexit out fast enough. Wow, what a trolling, hypocritical dunning-kruger maroon you are, shvonder-eTASS.
All Trump cares about is controlling the news cycle. He desperately wants to keep Mueller, Jared and Stormy Daniels off the front page. This does it, for the weekend. Why else does he run down the hall to barge into a meeting and get something out of it? This MO is becoming so transparent even his supporters should be seeing it.
First, let’s presume that Kim can trade away his long-distance intercontinental missile capability for maintenance of the status quo on the Korean peninsula which would guarantee his regime’s continued existence as a personal fief.
That is certainly possible, but to use the chess game metaphor, de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula is a piece on the board. I don’t know enough to speculate on what kind of outcome the US, South Korea, and China expect to see.
I do believe all parties know that North Korea is a ticking time bomb that will, one day, go off, and that difficult choices must be made. If that is true, Kim’s job is to convince the US, South Korea, and China that it is not a ticking time bomb. Don’t know how that would work w/o denuclearization.
It has long been apparent that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are to blackmail neighboring nations into subsidizing the Kims’ regimes. If Kim is given subsidies in exchange for handing over his nukes, he is in a pickle because once he loses his nuclear assets, he would have a hard time rebuilding them, but any subsidy will need to be actively continued & can be cut off at at any time.
It is a dicey situation. A dream solution would be a gradual transformation of North Korea into a modern Pacific nation. I don’t think that will happen.
” off the front page. “
Bill Clinton used to do it all the time – they even made a movie about it called “Wag the Dog” – are you suggesting its unprecedented or unpresidential or are you just trying to “wag the dog” yourself? Please clarify.
The US should change its overall policy to one that would welcome no-expectation talks with basically any regime at any practicable time with a goal of a frank exchange of views. Various pre-conditions set in the past to holding talks with Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, etc., have resulted in too little talk and too much structural intransigence. Will more talk lead to less intransigence? Maybe yes, maybe no. Reagan and Gorbachev had a historic breakthrough when they met because there was a deep understanding of each other’s objectives but with North Korea the world is unclear about what they expect to achieve.
One near insoluble outcome is that normalizing the world’s posture with North Korea means legitimizing nuclear proliferation. But then maybe that’s the direction the real world is heading towards in the 21st century, a world with a lot more small-country nuclear powers.
The US should change its overall policy to one that would welcome no-expectation talks with basically any regime at any practicable time with a goal of a frank exchange of views.
Some things are beyond the pale, even for this “isolationist.” Genocide or an expressed wish to engage in genocide. Some things the “gentlemen’s league of nations” should not tolerate.
The UN’s charter pays special attention to both weapons of mass destruction and wars of conquest. Both will get you before the security council in short order. The idea that both wars of conquest and weapons of mass destruction should be forbidden by all nations has an interesting set of ideas behind it, but I cannot get into it in this short space.
According to Bloomberg, the Norks hope to get a peace treaty out of their meeting with The Donald: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-10/trump-needs-unfamiliar-tools-like-patience-for-north-korea-talks.
I don’t know if Trump is a great negotiator, but I believe he is a savvy negotiator. He won’t give away any more than he has to. Kim probably wants a peace treaty as a pretext for removing some or all of the international sanctions against North Korea. Sanctions can be crippling, if they can be maintained. It can be argued that Haiti is a shithole country because of sanctions that were in effect for less than fifty years, and that sanctions regime ended almost two centuries ago.
He desperately wants to keep Mueller, Jared and Stormy Daniels off the front page.
Heh, heh… Guess who got new shiny talking points!
Word of the day to describe our Dunning-Kruger sufferer is “vacuous”.
vac·u·ous. [ˈvakyo͞oəs]
ADJECTIVE
– having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence; mindless
Seems like Robert Mueller is a better investigator than the ones Trump had looking into Obama’s birth certificate.
Mueller indicted a dozen people who are foreigners living abroad. They will never be tried. This is what is called “showboating”, and Mueller should cut it out, he’s not half the showboater that Trump is.
Seems like Robert Mueller is a better investigator than the ones Trump had looking into Obama’s birth certificate.
And what did Mueller find so far? Oh wait, never mind Mueller, STORMY! What a tool, what a troll, what a maroon.
Oh, and if 0bumbler birth certificate canard sticks in your craw so much, why did you vote for sHrillary? After all it was she who invented birtherism. What a hypocritical troll you are, Shvonder-eTASS. But keep digging cupcake.
It strikes me that the Trump “birther” investigation ended when it became clear there wasn’t much there. Mueller, not so much. Now who’s doing the better job?
Woolly wrote: “Mueller indicted a dozen people who are foreigners living abroad. They will never be tried.”
Yet here is the Justice Department on the record declaring that the Russia investigation isn’t, in fact, “a witch hunt”. It isn’t a “hoax”. It isn’t just a “phony Democrat excuse for losing the election,” as Trump has often tweeted. There really was, the Justice Department is saying, a Russian influence operation to interfere in the the 2016 presidential election, and it really was at the expense of Clinton and in favor of Trump.
Yet here is the Justice Department on the record declaring that the Russia investigation isn’t, in fact, “a witch hunt”
Given that the Mueller investigation is independent of the entire DOJ, with the exception of Rosenstein, exactly how would the DOJ know this? From the same illegal leaks that the rest of us see on CNN and in the Washington Post?
bb, Shvonder-eTASS cannot help but spew latest talking points. He must have just received a new batch, so they have to be disseminated. Just consider this canard: it really was at the expense of Clinton and in favor of Trump. Wow. just wow.