Tag: North Korea

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Donald Trump Declares “There Is No Longer A Nuclear Threat From North Korea”

Donald Trump

In an early morning Twitter thread, Donald Trump declared that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”

This comes after Trump’s five hour summit meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un earlier this week.

The Donald also attempted to deflect his decision to suspend military maneuvers with South Korea in an act of appeasement to North Korea by tweeting “We save a fortune by not doing war games.”

So, there you go – problem solved?

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Trump Produced Hollywood-Style Movie Trailer Starring Himself & Kim Jong Un

Well, this is… something.

It was reported earlier today that Donald Trump presented North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with a slick, four-minute Hollywood movie-styled video that cast Trump and Kim as the heroes of a story about “two men, two leaders, one destiny.”

Destiny Pictures presents a story of opportunity. A new story, a new beginning. One of peace. Two men, two leaders, one destiny. A story about a special moment in time, when a man is presented with one chance which may never be repeated. What will he choose? To show vision and leadership? Or not?

Via Vox:

“History is always evolving, and there comes a time when only a few are called upon to make a difference,” the narrator of the video says. “But the question is — what difference will the few make? The past doesn’t have to be the future. Out of the darkness can come the light, and the light of hope can burn bright.”

The video is heavy-handed in its Hollywood approach — it casts the potential reconciliation between North and South Korea as a “sequel,” and the narrator proudly declares, “Destiny Pictures presents: a story of opportunity.”

The short film was shown before Trump’s press conference after the meetings concluded.

The video is clearly meant to play up to Kim Jong Un’s ego, a tactic Trump must have wholly embraced because he knew HE would respond to such cinematic overtures.

Here’s the video:

Trump was asked if he was “concerned” whether the video might be used by Kim as propaganda?

“I’m not concerned at all,” declared Trump.

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Citing His “Special Bond” With Kim Jong Un, Trump Signs Agreement To Suspend Military Exercises With South Korea

Kim Jong-Un of North Korea with Donald Trump

After a half-day of “intensive” meetings, Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un publicly signed a joint statement Tuesday agreeing to pursue the denuclearization of North Korea although some described the document as “brief and vague.”

As part of the agreement, Trump promised to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea.

From NBC News:

The pact came at the end of a historic half-day round of negotiations that marked the first time a sitting U.S. president had met with his North Korean counterpart. “From the beginning, we got along,” Trump later told reporters.

Trump also confirmed military exercises involving American and South Korea forces would be put on hold for now. He said sanctions imposed against the Kim regime would not be removed until “we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor.”

While the agreement fell short of outlining concrete measures that would lead to Kim giving up his nuclear weapons program — the stated long-term goal of U.S. negotiators — it gave Trump and Kim a piece of paper to point to as a sign of progress and a symbol of goodwill.

Trump told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos just hours after the summit meeting that he believes North Korea will denuclearize because of his newly-found “special bond” with Kim Jong Un.

“I do trust him, yeah,” Trump said. “Maybe in a year you’ll be interviewing and I’ll say I made a mistake. It’s possible. We’re dealing at a high level, a lot of things can change, a lot of things are possible.”

“I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean Peninsula – it’s going to be a very different relationship than it has in the past,” Trump said. He went on to say that he and Kim have “developed a very special bond” and that they spent “a lot of time together today, very intensive time.”

At a press conference after the meeting of the two leaders, Trump acknowledged that he has invited Kim Jong Un to the White House and the North Korean leader has accepted.

Trump also shared that he has no notes from the summit because he doesn’t need them. “I don’t have to verify because I have one of the great memories of all time.”

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Trump Lowers Expectations As He Announces North Korea Summit Back On

After canceling the much-ballyhooed summit with North Korea, Donald Trump now says the meeting with “supreme leader” Kim Jong-Un is back on.

But.

The Trumpster made a point of lowering expectations for the outcome saying this will be more of a “get-to-know-you” kind of meeting (cough**photo-op**cough).

The summit was cancelled by the president last week on the grounds that Mr. Kim’s government had shown “open hostility” toward his administration.

From The New York Times:

The president rescheduled the get-together with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, barely a week after scrubbing it on the grounds that Mr. Kim’s government had shown “open hostility” toward his administration. In the days since, both sides worked to bridge the divide and proceed with the meeting.

The reversal followed an Oval Office meeting on Friday afternoon with a high-ranking North Korean envoy who delivered a personal letter from Mr. Kim to Mr. Trump. The envoy, Kim Yong-chol, the former North Korean intelligence chief and top nuclear arms negotiator, became the first North Korean official to set foot in the White House since 2000 and only the second ever to meet with a sitting American president.

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Trump’s On-Again, Off-Again North Korean Summit

A high-ranking official from North Korea is traveling to the United States to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an effort to revive Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again summit meeting with the nation’s “supreme leader,” Kim Jong-Un.

The summit meeting was originally scheduled to take place in Singapore on June 12 but was unexpectedly cancelled by Trump. Some say he shelved the meeting before North Korea could do the same, thus, embarrassing Trump.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Kim Yong-chol, one of the most trusted aides to the North’s leader and a former intelligence chief, was “heading now to New York.” In a reference to the moves made since he canceled the on-again-off-again summit meeting, the president added, “Solid response to my letter, thank you!”

The former intelligence chief, who is 72, has been at the side of the North Korean leader, 34, during a recent whirl of diplomacy, meeting with South Koreans in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula and with the Chinese.

Mr. Kim’s trip to the United States starts the most important negotiating track leading up to the summit meeting. Over the weekend, a team of American diplomats met with North Korean officials in the Demilitarized Zone, and White House logistics experts have been talking with North Koreans in Singapore about arrangements for the leaders’ meeting there.

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Trump Cancels Summit With North Korea – ‘No Nobel Prize For You’

Image via White House Communications Agency

Citing “open hostility” from North Korea, Donald Trump has cancelled his June 12 summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Leaving the possibility open to a future meeting, Trump told the North Korean leader “this missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.”

Trump had high hopes that the meeting would be a huge foreign policy victory for him.

Even as observers noted the status of the summit was tenuous, folks in the U.S. were already celebrating a possible win for Trump.

Commemorative coins featuring Trump and “Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un” were designed in advance of the meeting by the White House Communications Agency.

North Korean officials were reportedly angered when Vice President Mike Pence said Mr. Kim could meet the same fate as Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, if he did not make a deal with the United States. In 2011, Libyan rebels killed Colonel Qaddafi during the Arab Spring upheavals.

The government of neighboring South Korea was blindsided by Trump’s announcement.

“We are attempting to make sense of what, precisely, President Trump means,” said government spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom.

Here’s the text of Trump’s letter to Kim Jong-Un:

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We greatly appreciate your time, patience, and effort with respect to our recent negotiations and discussions relative to a summit long sought by both parties, which was scheduled to take place on June 12 in Singapore. We were informed that the meeting was requested by North Korea, but that to us is totally irrelevant. I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting. Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place. You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.

I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters. Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of the hostages who are now home with their families. That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.

If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write. The world, and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth. This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.

Sincerely yours,

Donald J. Trump
President of the United States of America

Folks from all parts chimed in:

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Trump: “There’s A Substantial Chance” North Korea Summit Won’t Work Out

trump2.jpg
Donald Trump

The New York Times is reporting Donald Trump’s much-ballyhooed summit meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Un, may not take place as scheduled.

“There’s a very substantial chance that it won’t work out,” Mr. Trump told reporters before a meeting in the Oval Office with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in. “It may not work out for June 12.”

Mr. Trump expressed continued enthusiasm for the diplomatic encounter, saying he believed it could usher in a period of prosperity for North Korea. But he acknowledged that recent statements by North Korea had cast a pall of uncertainty over the timing of the meeting, which is set for Singapore. He appeared as baffled as anyone else about what might come next.

“We’re moving along. We’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said. “There are certain conditions we want to happen. I think we’ll get those conditions. And if we don’t, we won’t have the meeting.

“If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later,” he added. “Maybe it will happen at a different time. We will see. We are talking.”

According to Vox, a big part of the problem is South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Moon is a leftist who took office in May of last year, back when Trump was threatening war with North Korea. He made a deep and concerted effort to try to broker negotiations between Trump and Kim to defuse the tension, and part of his strategy was making grandiose promises about what talks could accomplish — even floating the possibility that Trump could win a Nobel Prize to entice him to the table.

The problem, as Kelly points out, is that this was always a kind of shell game: Moon could never change the fact that the US and North Korea want fundamentally different things. Basically, he argues, this was a gambit to try to convince Trump not to go to war with North Korea — one that may yet fail.

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North Korea Threatens To Cancel Summit Over U.S./South Korea Air Force Drills

North Korea has suspended talks with South Korea and declared that next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump could be cancelled over upcoming joint Air Force drills taking place in South Korea with the U.S. Air Force.

North Korea has always expressed displeasure at the annual joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises. But apparently, with the U.S. summit so close on the calendar, North Korea must have had different expectations this year.

From The Washington Post:

The South Korean and U.S. militaries had scaled back and played down the exercises, declining the news media the usual access to the drills. North Korea barely said a word about the drills during the computer simulation exercises that took place through April.

The two-week-long Max Thunder drills between the two countries’ Air Forces, an annual event that began on Friday, have, however, clearly struck a nerve in North Korea.

“This exercise targeting us, which is being carried out across South Korea, is a flagrant challenge to the Panmunjom Declaration and an intentional military provocation running counter to the positive political development on the Korean Peninsula,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency said in a report published early.

The Max Thunder exercise involves about 100 warplanes, including eight F-22 radar-evading fighters and an unspecified number of B-52 bombers and F-15K jets, according to the South’s main Yonhap News Agency. During last year’s Max Thunder exercises, U.S. and South Korean fighter jets flew an average 60 sorties a day to showcase their firepower.

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Donald Trump To Kim Jong-Un: See You In Singapore!

(image via Flickr)

President Trump sent a message today to North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un: “See you in Singapore.”

Trump’s much-ballyhooed sit-down with the often erratic North Korean president will be a history-making meeting now scheduled for June 12.

The announcement came just hours after three Americans had been released by North Korea and landed safely back in the United States.

From The New York Times:

The summit will be the first face-to-face meeting between a sitting American president and the North Korean leader. Releasing the hostages removed a significant obstacle for Mr. Trump as he heads into the peace talks. A senior United States official said their release was an American condition to the talks.

The president praised Mr. Kim and said he was “nice in letting them go before the meeting.” Last year Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim threatened nuclear war against each other’s countries.

“We’re starting off on a new footing,” Mr. Trump said early on Thursday.

Mr. Trump hopes to convince Mr. Kim to abandon his nuclear weapons and the missiles that can carry them.

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Fox News’ Hypocrisy Over Presidents Meeting North Korean Dictator “It’s A Terrible Idea/It’s Genius!”

NowThis Politics demonstrates with ease the hypocrisy over at Fox News.

Back when President Obama considered meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, it was the WORST idea in the world according to the geniuses at Fox News.

Now that Donald Trump has proposed doing the exact same thing, he’s brilliant.

Watch below as the video editors flip back and forth from the coverage of Obama then Trump.