The return of three Americans held as prisoners in North Korea can be celebrated by the whole country, regardless of political affiliation. We can all feel a bit of the gratitude that they and their families are feeling today. But we must not pretend that this bit of micro-diplomacy guarantees the success of the broader mission for which Donald Trump has recklessly built up expectations with comments like his tweet on Thursday flaunting an ambitious goal to "denuclearize that entire peninsula."
We must also not forget that Trump's strutting bravado with regard to North Korea is a symptom of the same mental defect that motivated him to violate the terms of our pact with Iran, and five other nations, to prohibit them from developing nuclear weapons. So even if he strikes a deal with North Korea (which is by no means certain), it's one step forward, two steps back.
There is, however, an obvious string of commonality that weaves through everything Trump does. In almost every public statement he's made about Iran, he's inserted a jab at President Obama over the multinational agreement that Trump has called "one of the worst deals ever negotiated in American diplomatic history." Likewise, he regularly bashes Obama for not having terminated North Korea's nuclear weapons program during his term. Note that there are good reasons for not rewarding the Kim regimes that Obama and every other American president have observed.
Trump's fetish with all things Obama extends to nearly every initiative he's pursued as president. Even Fox News has noticed this all-consuming psychosis. They recently did a story calling the scuttling of the Iran deal the "latest Trump move to dismantle key Obama policies." The story noted that:
"Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement marks just the latest development in the president's ongoing effort to undo predecessor Barack Obama's legacy -- including trying to dismantle Obamacare while making drastic changes to U.S. immigration and military policies. [...] Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has repealed or rescinded dozens of regulations, executive orders and international agreements implemented by the Obama administration over the eight years of his presidency. That effort began three days after Trump was inaugurated."
Indeed. Trump's sole motivation appears to be to unravel everything that Obama successfully implemented. Although it's a bit surreal to see Fox News articulate it so explicitly. Trump's gnawing jealousy has him on a single-minded path of destruction. It's why he installed cabinet heads whose sole objectives are to weaken, and eventually eliminate, the departments they run. It's a fact that is so transparent that even Fox News is comfortable reporting it. They posted a tweet listing the deliberate damage that Trump is doing to the Obama legacy:
Ironically, the items in that list are all examples of harm that Trump is doing, not just to Obama's legacy, but to America. Polls show that most voters are in favor of the Democratic/liberal position on every single one of the those issues. Trump is working furiously against the interests of the people. So Fox News is posting what amounts to a campaign ad for voting Democratic in 2018. And while Fox is also continuing their regular broadcasts of repulsive opinions by heinous pundits, we might just pause for a moment to thank them for this inadvertent gift. But don't expect to get any more between now and November.