Kim Jong Un has played Trump like a Stradivarius
by Max Boot
“I don’t think he’s playing. The United States has been played beautifully, like a fiddle, because you had a different kind of a leader. We’re not going to be played, okay?”
— President Trump, speaking of Kim Jong Un, April 27
Actually, Trump has been played from the start — and he’s the only one who doesn’t know it. His dealings with North Korea have been a master class in self-deception.
In the month since the Swindle in Singapore, it has become obvious that Kim is arming rather than disarming. On June 29, NBC News reported that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, North Korea was increasing production of fuel for nuclear weapons and working to conceal its activities from the United States. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo then canceled a meeting with the Indian foreign minister to fly off to Pyongyang, presumably to tell the North Koreans that they had better start delivering on their promises.
Pompeo left North Korea on Saturday humiliated and empty-handed. Unlike during his two previous trips to Pyongyang, Pompeo did not get an audience with “Chairman Kim.” He was shunted off to a lower-level Kim — former intelligence chief Kim Yong Chol — and sent on his way with the North Koreans denouncing his “gangster-like” and “cancerous” demands for nuclear disarmament.
Kim has played Trump like a Stradivarius. He has gotten everything he wanted — sanctions relaxation, international legitimation — without giving up anything in return. Vladimir Putin must be licking his chops. If Trump was fleeced so thoroughly by a tyro tyrant whom he was denouncing as recently as the beginning of this year, imagine how much he will give up to a veteran despot for whom he has had nothing but praise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/kim-jong-un-has-played-trump-like-a-stradivarius/2018/07/09/1c5592d4-8391-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html?utm_term=.59bb253041c2
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