Today's Trump statement sums him- and his supporters- up
This is not a positive thing in a man who has at least theoretical access to every bloomin' secret the United States, NATO, and our other allies have (though there is a strong suspicion that some- like Israel, which lost an intelligence asset due to POTUS's blabbermouth tendencies- may be keeping certain things from him). Every word the President of the United States utters can set off diplomatic hurricanes everywhere on Earth. This is not a job for a guy with no filters.
Just as some of us tried to warn you in 2016.
Today Mr. Trump was praising his newest authoritarian buddy, Kim Jong Un, in an interview with Fox News, his personal MInistry of Propaganda. He not only expressed admiration for the most brutal dictator on the planet but actually said the following:
He’s the head of a country, and I mean, he’s the strong head, don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.
The President of the United States wants the American people to treat him the way the people of North Korea treat Kim Jong Un. Just let that sink in for a moment.
And how does Kim get his people to do that? Last year the International Bar Association issued a report stating that there is evidence of
...systematic murder (including infanticide), torture, persecution of Christians, rape, forced abortions, starvation and overwork leading to countless deaths...
...(Kim's regime has) designed and perpetuated a brutal, totalitarian regime, a signature feature of which is a network of political prisons that has no parallel in the world today.
Mr. Trump is also impressed with Kim's record of firing generals, citing his recent firing of at least three. Yeah, the generals sit up at attention when Kim speaks, too. When one of his generals fell asleep at a meeting, Kim had had him shot.
Perhaps because it saves the time and expense of digging graves, often Kim doesn't bother using firing squads. He's fond of having people who have incurred his personal wrath shot with anti-aircraft guns.
No, I don't think anyone has accused Kim of not being a "strong leader." That's not quite the problem, Mr. President.
Later this morning, when Mr. Trump realized what a deep hole he dug for himself in the Fox interview, he added something which, to anyone who hasn't totally turned off his or her higher reasoning centers, is nothing short of bizarre: he said that his comments about Kim were intended as... a joke. "I'm kidding," he said. "You don't understand sarcasm."
In some ways, that's just as worrisome. This is not the sort of thing a president kids about, especially a president with authoritarian tendencies of his own with a record of scorning democratic leaders and buddying up with authoritarian foreign heads of state. Not even ironically. Especially ironically. Sorry, but excusing his blunders by saying that he's "not a politician" even while defending his nonstop lies by saying that "all politicians lie" won't help here. One does not have to be a politician to know that if this even was a joke, it was so breathtakingly stupid a joke that it's hard to imagine any other president we've ever had- even Dubyah, despite his talent for putting his foot in his mouth- even come within a mile of making it.
Now, to his credit, Mr. Trump in the past has been scathing in his denunciations of the human rights abuses of which Kim is guilty. Late last year, POTUS told the United Nations:
No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being of their own people than the depraved regime of North Korea. It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of countless more.
Yet the Washington Post reports that Mr. Trump's praise of Kim on North Korean radio was even more effusive than it has been in the States. Was I a Christian languishing in one of Kim's prisons and possibly awaiting execution for my faith, I might feel just a tiny bit betrayed. Yet I am confident that Mr. Trump's Evangelical admirers here in America will find a way not to think about that.
Reporters initially thought that this was a North Korean propaganda film. But it turns out to have been made by the White House.
Mr.Trump's admiration for Kim seems to be of recent vintage, born of the usefulness of the summit to Mr. Trump personally- and almost certainly to North Korea's flattering praise of Mr. Trump. As I've noted previously, narcissists are easily manipulated- also not a helpful trait in an American president. Praise one effusively, and he will love you.
Mr. Trump has no filters- and probably no center, no core commitments or convictions other than to whatever serves his interests at the moment. He seems to have no sense whatever of what is appropriate or of the consequences of what he says and does. Both his own statements and his admiration of authoritarian leaders elsewhere raise serious questions about his commitment to the most basic American values, to the American system, and to the Constitution he swore to support and defend. He is erratic. He is easily manipulated. He follows the classic authoritarian playbook of seeking to discredit all possible sources of information which are not either friendly to him or under his control, and he has succeeded in creating a legion of robot-like followers who automatically discount and sneer at any and all information that puts him in a bad light as "fake news."
If all of that doesn't make you seriously worried about this guy, I just don't know what to say.
But having said all that, there is one thing that needs to be said of Kim Jong Un.
He may be awful, but at least he isn't Hillary.
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