On Monday evening, President Trump met with Dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, for the first time in what many hope to be the beginning of peace on the Koren peninsula. This was the first time a President of the United States had met with a dictator from North Korea. Many folks on the right rejoiced, people on the left were up in arms (shocker), some people on the right were mad, and others on the left were happy. You can probably already guess where the media stood on this. I guess you could say that the emotions were very mixed. Before I get into the details of the meeting, I want to show some of the reactions by people on either side of the isle.
Conservative icon Ben Shapiro, whose podcast I listen to on a daily basis, spent the evening and into the next morning ripping into President Trump, saying conservatives would have ripped into President Obama for meeting to Kim Jong Un in the exact same way Trump did. Well, I must not be conservative because I wouldn’t have torched Obama for trying to make peace with the dictator of the worst regime on planet earth, but okay. Shapiro also compared Kim to Hitler, tweeting about a video of Trump meeting Kim, “Imagine that Kim is Hitler here and try not to let your stomach churn at the triumphal music playing beneath these images. Because Kim is Hitlertarian.” I think that’s a fair comparison. Kim has killed his own family members as well as people of his own country and has threatened to nuke other countries. But I don’t think the Hitler-Kim-comparison is entirely accurate. Here’s why: Kim Jong Un does not have anywhere near the power that Hitler had. Kim isn’t a threat to take over the world. While he might have nuclear power, that’s really all he has. And on top of that, the United States’ nuclear button is “much bigger and more powerful” than that of North Korea, in reference to President Trump’s tweet back in January. Let’s put it this way, if Kim Jong Un ever fired a nuclear missile at the United States or any of our allies, North Korea would be leveled within minutes. So while Kim might be an awful and evil person, I wouldn’t quite equate him to Hitler for the reason just stated.
Meanwhile, it seemed almost everyone on the left had lost their minds. They were suggesting Trump had been played by Kim Jong Un and that Trump is an idiot for “bending over for him.” Trump hasn’t been played by Kim. Trump didn’t give up anything to him, unlike Obama, who shipped millions of dollars in cash over to the Iranians, who are still the worst terror regime on earth, as long as the Iranians said they would be nice to the United States and not continue their nuclear program, which they still continued to develop. If anyone, President Obama was the one who bent over for a horrible regime just so he could say he made a deal, even though it was an atrocious one. Another reason people on the left are so mad about this meeting is because while the 2016 election cycle was going on and even after Trump was elected and in office, they were saying that if Trump were to be elected president or that since he is the president, he would get us into a nuclear war with North Korea and start World War 3. Well, it turns out that just the opposite of that is looking to happen if things go as planned.
Now we come to the reaction of the media. Chris Cillizza over at CNN is one of the worst, if not the worst writer I’ve ever read. He and Stephen Collison (also from CNN) are very bad. It seems that every article they write about Trump have a negative spin on it. For example, here are two titles of articles Cillizza wrote about the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un: “The 49 wildest quotes from Donald Trump’s Singapore press conference,” and “Donald Trump’s fake-it-until-you-make-it strategy on North Korea.” Now, let’s turn the tables and pretend that Obama is the president and met with Kim Jong Un, even though he never actually did so when he could have. If that were the case, the titles of these articles would be entirely different, and something like, “The 49 most memorable, or best quotes from Barack Obama’s Singapore press conference,” and “Barack Obama’s grand scheme to negotiate a deal with North Korea and bring peace.” We all know the headlines would all read something like that. I don’t have time to go through every single negative article and TV segment, but those are just a few examples.
What’s my take on all of this? I am very happy with this meeting. Even though no actual agreement has been signed by North Korea to denuclearize and all we have so far is Trump’s word to go on, I’m still hopeful that something will eventually come of this. Although, it is very ironic that Trump is celebrating already even though no real deal has been reached because back in 2013, he tweeted this, “The reason great dealmakers do not OPENLY celebrate a deal, especially one that is not complete, is that it shows weakness to the other side.” A little hypocrisy there, and I certainly hope there isn’t any weakness on Trump’s side. Trump also said many things about Kim that are very questionable. For example, from Maegan Vazquez at CNN, Trump said this about Kim, “He’s got a great personality. He’s a funny guy, he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator. He loves his people, not that I’m surprised by that.” I think I understand what Trump might be trying to do here and I’ll explain in a second, but I don’t agree with what Trump is doing. Trump is touting Kim Jong Un as a great guy with a “great personality” when in reality, he’s been murdering his own people and family members. That brings me to the worst thing I think Trump said while in Singapore. Trump said that Kim “loves his people.” I actually have a very big problem with this. I don’t think you can kill, and hold your own people in slavery and still love them. That’s not how it works. But what I think Trump is trying to do here is butter Kim up by saying all these nice things about him and act like a friend to him so he’ll be more likely to make a deal to denuke. I absolutely want North Korea to denuke, I think this should be the end goal along with bringing human rights back to North Korea, but I’m not so sure that saying all kinds of nice things about the evil dictator of the worst country on earth is the best way to go about it.
If no deal emerges from this meeting and all of Trump’s sweet talk is for nothing, this will be a huge blow to his presidency. He’s taking a big risk by doing all of this and I can only pray that something amazing comes out of this.
Above All Things 