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Breaking: Trump, Kim Jong Un to Meet
From CBS News:
South Korea’s national security adviser Chung Eui-yong said President Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong un, and the North is “committed” to denuclearization. The meeting is intended to take place by May.
Chung also said Kim Jong un has agreed to refrain from nuclear testing, and routine joint military exercises between the North and South will continue as planned.
The announcement was made at the White House after President Trump walked into the White House briefing room Thursday and told reporters that South Korea would be making a major announcement at 7 p.m. He added that he has spoken with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
“South Korea is going to be making a huge statement tonight on a big subject … on a big subject…on North Korea,” said Mr. Trump, according to CBS News Jacqueline Alemany. Journalists were instructed by the president to turn off their cameras. South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that the South Korean national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, would be holding a joint press briefing with White House press secretary Sarah Sanders at the White House at 7 p.m.
South Korean national security adviser: "I told President Trump that in our meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he's committed to denuclearization. He pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests." https://t.co/4hFR3QVIoi pic.twitter.com/vBWktTMuyI
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 9, 2018
JUST IN, via @PressSec: pic.twitter.com/asdBJhSBD7
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) March 9, 2018
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Published in Foreign Policy
As for the Kim meeting… I know that it’s a political victory for Donald Trump, but I don’t really understand all the excitement.
I often play a game in my mind.
If Barack Obama was about to have a sit down meeting with the crazy leader of a dystopian nation on the premise that the crazy leader said he was denuclearizing, would the Americans who are praising Trump now go, “Wow! That’s a great accomplishment for Barack Obama!” or would they say, “Wow! That’s not going anywhere, and how dare he legitimize a tin pot dictator? It’s Bill Clinton’s idiocy all over again…. That little fellow is just buying even MORE time to build his bombs with Chinese materials….”
Btw, this is not to say that talking with North Korea is bad. It’s certainly better than having a nuclear war. I just don’t see how this one announcement is all that great. And I also don’t know why anyone trust anyone in North Korea for any good faith at all.
ANALYSIS: True
Lois, the blunder of Clinton and Bush wasn’t in talking with NK but in deciding to then do nothing. We’ll see where this goes.
NK is not a tin pot dictatorship. Talking with them doesn’t give them legitimacy any more than Soviet summit talks gave the evil empire legitimacy.
The North Koreans (and the world) see it somewhat differently.
I very respectfully disagree, but I am quite willing to say that past approaches haven’t improved the situation, so… okay.
I am a native of Ann Arbor. So was my wife. We did what most ambitious, hard-working Ann Arbor natives unwilling to become Progressive pod people did. We left.
If you don’t want to work hard and wish to live on the bounty of a generous government and/or union Michigan is the place to be. On the working class end it is infected by the union mentality of set work to the pace of the slowest worker while paying everyone at the rate based on the output of the fastest. On the upper-middle class level it is infected by the belief that the crazier the idea for running society the more likely it is to work. I personally suffered the results of that in my youth. God help you if you try to work harder and smarter than your peers because they will come after you like crabs in a bucket.
It has not gotten better since the 1970s. Certainly not the last time I was there in August 2016. Michigan today is more segregated than Texas was in the 1950s, more class-conscious and more driven by the politics of envy than any place I have visited in the last 20 years. (Admittedly I have not been to California since the 1980s, so California may be worse.)
Anyone in Michigan with any gumption did what my wife and I did – left the state. Except for my parents and a few odd cousins, all of my family has left – most of them for Texas.
It may be that sanity is returning to the state, but that has not been my experience when I visited. Admittedly I visit southeast Michigan, usually Ann Arbor, where my parents still live.
@seawriter Very interesting.
Yeah we have done so much better with those wise experienced pros like Hillary and Kerry and Obama and Biden negotiating for us.
You are treating one them as a human being and the other as a calculator. All politicians are human and Kim is no Kissinger.
Diplomacy is driven as much by faulty reasoning and mistaken expectations as by sound logic. It’s anybody’s guess how this will turn out, but I share your skepticism.
What little history I know about this is terrifying. Why people want the government to do more, rather than just concentrate on what it has to do is beyond me.
I want this to work for peace, prosperity, etc., but mostly I just want to throw success in the face of those who never stop lecturing, and yet have so little understanding of anything.
BINGO
Being chronically pessimistic must get depressing at times. I’ll say a prayer for you.
You just lost all credibility as an analyst. Trump is famously lazy? He’s probably the most industrious President ever in modern times, and the word “ famously” implies there’s widespread agreement, so you are using that word wrongly as well. Maybe you are trying to add rhetorical emphasis the way millennials use the word literally, I don’t know.
Then, you make another absurd claim by implying that we shouldn’t be electing people who have no experience as President, er, to the Presidency.
Maybe you meant “no experience in politics”, but then Obama in 2008, as a half-term Senator would fall into that category as well.
People can’t be interpreting what you mean when you are either historically ignorant or that sloppy with language – in writing no less! I’m glad you haven’t been chosen to fill one of those vacant diplomatic jobs.
Your psychiatric diagnosis fails as you haven’t demonstrated basic sanity yourself.
This never gets enough attention,
Yes. However, one very important caveat. Trump loves his country. Obama loves their country. : True
Yes, and flat earthers see things differently than me too. So what? By talking to them does that mean I think flat earth ideas are legitimate? Even if it does mean that, if those flat earthers gain nukes then they must be contended with – a posture of disdain and shunning just won’t do anymore.
If Trump talks to Kim will this same “world” you speak of think that Kim is legitimate all of the sudden? Why would they? In what way? What does “legitimate” actually mean in this context?
I don’t think it will work. Have to see. Rocket Man is a monster and it seems to me the safe bet is this is just a game.
As far as Trump getting “rolled”, well, so was Clinton, Bush, and Obama, so I guess it would make Trump a normal President.
I understand this to be the real reason this is happening. Trump put the screws to enforcing the embargoes and restrictions.
I agree with you Fred. Kim is [sic] nortoriously flighty, unpredictable, and straight up unstable.
I disliked President Obama’s policies on a whole host of things, but that’s a faulty premise.
Fuzzy but timely.
I always think of this song
Pyongyang ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
in fact it’s cold as hell…
And dark …. very dark ….
That’s what you think. Obama was/is like a parent who acts like every conflict his kid has with the other kids in the neighborhood is his own kid’s fault. Now, exchange “kid” for “country”.
Yes, that is a very good point, Kevin. And the one about the clear fact that Trump loves this country.
Obama is a completely atypical president and leader of any kind. He despises the country that elected him. A general rule here: Don’t elect anti-American people to be the president of the United States of America. I think this should always be front and center in all voters’ minds — problem is that the media lies about Obama — so, many of the voters aren’t able to make this determination.
Let us not throw out false consciousness arguments simply because we disagree, I.e. “voters can’t make a determination.”
I don’t think President Obama’s hated this country. That has nothing to do with how the media portrayed him. I also don’t have a problem accepting President Trump loves his country, whatever the media says about him.
I don’t base my analysis of possible success on how anyone might “ feel” on any count.
The people in North Korea are drowning, just as if they were dropped into the East Sea, West Sea, Yellow Sea, or the Sea of Japan.
How about Hate for his country as founded. ie Fundamental Transformation.
How about Hate for half of it’s citizens. ie Bitter Clingers, Gun to a knife fight, Travon my Son, The list could be exhausting.
We will have to disagree. I am convinced he hated me and our country. I am convinced he is also a racist. I accept you are not convinced. That’s ok
I liked the comment not because I agree but because it is a relief to sometimes agree to disagree with no animosity between dis-agreerers.