Tuesday, June 12, 2018

What Trump Accomplished in the Summit With Kim Jong un


By Robert Wenzel

Setting aside for the moment that the United States should not be involved on the Korean peninsula, one has to cheer the effort put out by President Trump. He has toned down hostilities between the U.S. and North Korea, and that is a big deal.

Of course, it should be recognized that South Korean President Moon Jae-in deserves the real credit for bringing Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un together.  (See: The Man Who Brought Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un to the Table)

But, Trump did carry the ball across the goal line, in particular by shutting down the neoconservatives who were working overtime trying to kill the summit. They almost succeeded in shutting it down when
Trump's national security adviser, the bloodthirsty, warmonger John Bolton, stated in April that the "Libya model" should be applied to North Korea denuclearization.

Kim was justifiably outraged and Trump, perhaps fearing that Kim might cancel the summit, canceled it himself.

A hurried meeting took place between Kim and Moon.

Moon had already suggested that Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. Would he have to again remind Trump, the glory seeker, that the prize was dangling there for him?

Whatever was said, the Moon magic worked and the summit was back on and Trump shutdown the neocons, perhaps the same way he had shut them down earlier around Easter. The Daily Mail reported at that time: 
President Donald Trump told Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials to tone down the rhetoric in the weeks before his historic summit with North Korean President Kim Jong-Un, it was revealed on Sunday...
 The president surprised top advisers by urging restraint, officials told the newspaper.
National Security Adviser John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence were told to tone down their comments. 
'Mike, you got it?' Trump told the vice president, a person in the room told the [Wall Street] Journal. 'No f***ing crazy talk from anybody in the administration.'
And so the summit took place, with Trump, in his humble style, telling us that the summit went "better than anyone could have expected."

So it is unlikely we will get nuked this week by Rocket Man and Trump did the right thing by dangling progress, condos and skyscrapers in front of Kim's eyes.

The neocons will, of course, continue to attempt to sabotage peace, and the anti-Trump left, socialist-leaning always and embedded in mainstream media, is now condemning Trump for promoting to Kim a potential North Korean economic miracle.


In the end, though, it is not about MSM twisted evaluations, it is about one more day of peace and Kim perhaps dreaming of skyscrapers. This Trump accomplished.


Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes
EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve
Ban.and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for
the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn.
His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. The Robert Wenzel podcast is
on  iphone and stitcher.

UPDATE

The great video Trump showed Kim. Getting those ideas about skyscapers in his head.

According to The Guardian, reporters were shown a video ahead of Trump's press conference in Singapore, which the president said he had played it for Kim and his aides toward the end of their talks. It was made by Destiny Productions and was presented in Korean and English in the style of an action movie trailer.

10 comments:

  1. Cheers to Trump on this one. Listened to his speech live last night, he actually talked with a humble tone it seemed to me. I never feared a nuke from North Korea, although a lot of Alaskan’s did, maybe rightfully so, but the big picture is peace, for millions of Koreans.
    Also, I really thought Trump was being sincere when he said flat out, “I want the troops to come home”. It almost seemed like he didn’t like the war games and flyovers in Korea. Hard to figure this guy out.
    Let’s hope Trump (and Kim and Moon) can make it through to a peace.

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    1. Agreed, it would be great if Trump saw all this feel good PR as an excuse to start being less of a neocon overseas

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  2. Is Trump better than Hillary yet?

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    1. To be fair, Hillary likely would not have ruined the detentes with Iran and Cuba like Trump did. (Though she might have inflamed relations with Russia.)

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  3. Trump did a good job here. Now if he can build that wall and reform immigration and kick out all the turd world trash from America, that would be awesome for all Americans. Except you open border libertardians; you really should move to some Afican country.

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    Replies
    1. Learn how to spell, “African” has an “R” in it...

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  4. Really must watch Scott Adam's twitter feed to understand what is going on here in terms of persuasion. Scott is no libertarian, and so my constant caution applies: "Read everyone, just don't marry the guy!"

    Still, Mr. Adams deconstructs the persuasion angle in a very productive way to let us all see what is being attempted here. The attempts are very credible, and successful on their own terms.

    If Mr. Trump were a libertarian we would be very lucky.

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    1. If he were a libertarian he wouldn’t have gotten elected in the first place because he wouldn’t have run on a platform of immigration and trade restrictions.

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  5. I half expected Bolton to personally assassinate Kim just to see if he could single handedly kick off WWIII. Too bad Kudlow couldn't have passed his heart attack off to that asshole.

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  6. I hope the next round of talks includes removing US troops from South Korea.

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