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Winning the Information Campaign in Singapore
The White House communications team was on offense in Singapore. They rolled out Secretary of State Pompeo, and then posted a short statement, suggesting something significant was happening, in the hours leading up to the two leaders’ meeting. As it turned out, something significant did happen.
Sarah Sanders introducing Secretary Pompeo to the press corps in Singapore. The White House team posted that on their YouTube channel promptly. Secretary Pompeo was helping set the conditions for the two leaders to meet, communicating encouragement and confidence in the two nations’ teams, while maintaining President Trump’s goals.
Apparently, the New York Times tried to sabotage the meeting with a story based on the usual sources. The NYT claimed the US team lacked the technical expertise, to conclude a deal that would verifiably end the North Korean nuclear threat. Secretary Mike Pompeo gutted the story, with a cool recitation of the extensive preparation by all relevant agencies. He emphasized the PhDs stacked up in the interagency team. The Secretary of State, and former CIA chief, only left out “fake news.”
President Trump has an all-star team working on foreign policy, and a crack communications team — scrambling to keep up with his direct communication bursts. Hours after Secretary Pompeo addressed the press, the White House issued a brief statement on progress during the day.
Statement Regarding the Summit Between the United States and North Korea
The discussions between the United States and North Korea are ongoing and have moved more quickly than expected.
President Donald J. Trump will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. Following the initial greeting, President Trump and Chairman Kim will participate in a one-on-one meeting, with translators only, an expanded bilateral meeting, and a working lunch.
The United States delegation at tomorrow’s expanded bilateral meeting will include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Ambassador Sung Kim, and National Security Council Senior Director for Asia Matt Pottinger will join for the working lunch.
At the conclusion of the summit, President Trump will participate in a media availability before departing tomorrow at approximately 8 p.m. for the United States.
The times given were Singapore time, 12 hours ahead of our East Coast, 15 hours ahead of our West Coast. Doing the math, it read like there would be about nine hours of potential engagement between the two leaders, followed by public communication, (unstated) farewells to Singapore’s leadership, and movement.
The initial one-on-one meeting seemed designed to protect Kim’s life. He could speak there without fear of his generals using his words to justify a coup. Everything outside that meeting was for multiple publics’ and powers’ consumption.
Dan Scavino, Jr., the White House Director of Social Media, took the lead in tweeting the official story, in a series of colorful photo tweets. Visually giving Kim the honor due a head of state may ease a tough change in course, for the regime. Doing this, on the world stage, was so different from the Iran deal, to say nothing of the Libyan nuclear deal. The images, documenting the pageantry, reinforced President Trump’s earlier statements, that he would seek the kind of deal that he could submit to the Senate as a treaty.
HISTORY. #SingaporeSummit pic.twitter.com/XF3GNzzBui
— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸 (@Scavino45) June 12, 2018
Suddenly, there were tweets by reporters about a signing ceremony. President Trump struck his familiar pose, holding up the document for all the world to see what he signed. Of course, he knew the original camera images would be sharp enough for people to read the document, triggering reporting and commenting.
There you have it. Zoom in. #TrumpKimSummit pic.twitter.com/7JWMyMIFJa
— Sumiko Tan (@STsumikotan) June 12, 2018
The State Department tweeted the update on President Trump’s media availability time, and the White House YouTube channel livestreamed his comments. Before he spoke, a video in Korean and English was played. It made the case, to the North Korean elite and people, for change and opportunity now, without assigning any blame for the past. President Trump said the video was part of making the case to Kim for change leading to a much brighter, more prosperous future. That video has since been separated from the White House YouTube channel, perhaps for intellectual property reasons; President Trump now tweets a link to Facebook for the video.
Here is the English half of the peace promotional video, captured by the Globe and Mail.
The President gave less than eight minutes of prepared remarks, then took questions from the large international media pool for over 55 minutes.
@realDonaldTrump topped off the event by tweeting a slick, packaged video summary, that his communications staff must have finalized as he moved from the conference to the press availability.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018
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Published in Foreign Policy
Pompeo is brilliant. I like him more every day. The NYT is so tiresome. Can’t someone give them something productive to do. Like tell the truth?
I would also question the journalistic technicians the New York Times brought with them to adequately report on this momentous story. How many fact-checkers, historians, grammarians, translators, copy editors and proofreaders are on the job? What are their qualifications? How will we know their reports will be accurate after the many times they misled us in the past?
It’s comical watching them try so hard to find something wrong.
Dan Scavino, White House Director of Social Media, has been rapidly posting the news-making images of this historic event.
Now here is the multi-dimensional chess move: the same day of the US-North Korea meeting, the US unveiled a de facto embassy in Taiwan. The Trump administration is moving pieces on multiple boards to check China.
The signing ceremony, on the White House YouTube feed.
Finally, the media availability:
Yup, the #FakeMedia gonna fake. They hates him, they hates him forever!
Thanks:
Singapore PM
Japan PM
South Korean President
Chairman Kim
Chinese Leader Xi
No thanks, no mention, irrelevant: Russian leader Putin.
Yeeeee-ha!! All over in a “New York minute”!
Bravo President Trump!
But I love the agonizing from the Left over the awful sight of our flag touching the Nork flag! Suddenly, the Left agrees the Stars’n’ Stripes is a sacred, unsullied symbol of our beloved nation?
‘Course, when our flag was being burned and stomped on at home and abroad, uh, did Rhodes et al say..anything?
The flag is a symbol. In the dark you wouldn’t know the flag from your bedspread, it’s the pattern that makes it a flag. Anything you do to it, from saluting it to burning it, is “symbolic speech”.
And surely, displaying it at an international summit, to symbolize the commitment of two nations and provisionally at least their good faith, is the kind of symbolic speech for which a flag is primarily suited?
Too funny that the Left, which is just..disgusted, embarrassed, by any display of American “arrogance” , to whom”America First!” Is blasphemy–
is now so upset about an imaginary debasement of our flag!
Why, if Buraq Hussein ( remember, he wouldn’t even wear the flag pin on his lapel!) had been running this meeting, he would probably have aordered our flag graphic to be imprinted on the toilet paper at that luxury hotel in Singapore, and the Left woulda extolled his exemplary humility, the ultimate in “leading from (his) behind”!
I agree: it is a huge boon to the Norks that our flag hangs beside theirs! What other gesture could we make, at no cost and no disadvantage to the US, which could generate so much goodwill? S’what a flag is for!
(Oh, and don’t worry: if Kim goes home and starts boasting that he won, he humiliated and dominated the Stars ‘n’ Stripes, if he encourages his subjects to start chanting Death to America–
Can anyone doubt Trump will tear up the agreement? And Kim knows it, too.)
The other signature — that is written in Chosŏn’gŭl, or Hangul as the South Koreans call it. The Korean alphabet is a source of national pride, distinct from the character based writing systems of the Chinese and Japanese. Both Koreas have a national day to celebrate their writing system — which brought literacy to more than a small elite who could take the time to master enough characters.