Donald Trump’s sit-down with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un once again showed just what a brilliant, tough-headed negotiator he absolutely isn’t. All it took, apparently, was a few hours in Kim’s presence for Trump to go from saying in the State of the Union just months ago that “no regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea” to raving about Kim’s popularity.
His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor. They have a great fervor.
In the State of the Union, Trump focused on North Koreans tortured and killed by their government. A few hours in Kim’s presence and Trump was more focused on the beaches—“Boy look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?”—than on the human rights violations.
Last fall, Trump's view of Kim was that he was “obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people,” and, Trump pledged, Kim would “be tested like never before!” Now, given the chance to speak directly to North Koreans, Trump tells them that Kim “has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well.”
It does not sound like Kim left this summit saying “Boy, I have been tested like never before.” But for Trump, it was just another discovery that an authoritarian dictator with great beachfront property is exactly his kind of guy.