How Donald Trump Got Played By a Ruthless Dictator
Before President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un issued their joint statement on Tuesday afternoon in Singapore, before the two men met in private at a luxury hotel on the Singaporean island of Sentosa, before they shook hands with all the world watching, this much was true: Kim Jong-un had already won.
President Trump played right into Kim's hands. He signed his name alongside Kim's on a document that, by most indications, does little to pressure the North Koreans to truly denuclearize while committing to end U.S. joint military exercises with our ally South Korea. (North Korean sanctions will remain in place for now, Trump said.) He praised Kim's "great personality." He said it was a "great honor" to appear alongside Kim.
For Kim, the event was a coming out of sorts, a chance to show himself off to the world. He had a platform unlike any other – and far greater than anything available to him in the closed, impoverished nation he so cruelly presides over. Here was an opportunity to legitimize himself and his nation, to put North Korea on an equal footing with the mighty United States.
By all indications, Kim departed the summit on Tuesday having achieved exactly that. President Trump and the members of his administration validated the North Korean leader in a way like never before. "[Kim] is very talented," Trump said at his post-summit press conference. "Anybody that takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it and run it tough...You can take 1 out of 10,000 could not do it." Later, Trump told ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "He trusts me, and I trust him."
And what did the U.S. get in exchange? A vague, four-point joint statement in which North Korea vaguely commits to the "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" with no way to verify that commitment. Trump got played by a dictator half his age.
Let's not forget who Kim Jong-un is. Like his father and grandfather before him, Kim is a dictator and a despot. He runs an authoritarian nation. His government – if you can call it that – is one of the most brutal regimes in the world. A 2014 United Nations investigation accused North Korea of committing "unspeakable atrocities" akin to Nazi Germany. Prison camps, torture, starvation, political repression – they're all features of the North Korean regime.
Trump knows this. In a speech to the South Korean parliament last year, Trump spoke of the estimated 100,000 North Koreans suffering "in gulags, toiling in forced labor and enduring torture, starvation, rape and murder on a constant basis." He added, "All responsible nations must join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea – to deny it and any form – any form of it. You cannot support, you cannot supply, you cannot accept."
As the first meeting between the sitting U.S. and North Korean leaders, the summit was historic. But from the moment Trump and Kim arrived in Singapore, the event had all the trappings of a propaganda display for North Korea. For starters, the U.S. reportedly agreed to not bring up the issue of North Korea's widespread human rights abuses. Kim and his entourage were greeted by hordes of photographers wherever they went. As an Australian journalist covering the summit put it, Kim himself was treated like a rockstar:
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