You may have heard that Mike Pompeo traveled to North Korea this week to try to salvage something from the June 12 Bad Hair Day Summit.
It did not go well.
After a lot of feckless boasting, here’s the scorecard:
North Korea gets: A much-coveted photo op with an American president, the sense of legitimacy that comes with that, a promise to cease joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises, propaganda footage of our dopey president saluting a DPRK general, and some extra time to bedazzle their nuclear warheads with Hello Kitty rainbow glitter if they feel like it.
The United States gets: A temporary false sense of security if you’re a moron, and nothing else. Oh, and more lies from our administration about its “accomplishments.”
From The Washington Post:
Just hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo departed North Korea after two days of nuclear negotiations, North Korea sharply criticized the U.S. team's attitude as “regrettable,” and accused the U.S. of making unilateral demands of denuclearization.
The remarks from North Korea’s foreign ministry directly contradicted statements made by Pompeo that the visit made “progress on almost all of the central issues” and involved “good-faith negotiations.”
The Foreign Ministry statement, issued by an unnamed spokesman, said the U.S. violated the spirit of the June 12 Singapore summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.
The mixed messages followed a visit in which Pompeo did not meet with the North Korean leader while in the country and did not secure a breakthrough in forging a shared understanding of denuclearization.
You mean vague promises from murderous tyrants who’ve never kept their promises, like, ever are meaningless? Who could have ever imagined?
The only real surprise is that North Korea didn’t release footage of its negotiators somehow convincing Pompeo to lick a frozen metal pole.
But analysts said the reality is now sinking in that any final accord between the two nations to eliminate Pyongyang’s sophisticated nuclear and missile arsenal will be a long slog with no guarantee of success.
“While we were hopeful there would be some sort of breakthrough, it seems both sides agreed to merely keep talking,” said Harry Kazianis, an Asia expert at the Center for the National Interest.
Pompeo told reporters that the two countries would soon hold working-level talks on the destruction of Pyongyang’s missile-engine-testing facility. He also said Pentagon officials will meet with their North Korean counterparts on or near July 12 at the demilitarized zone between the Koreas to discuss the return of the remains of U.S. soldiers from the Korean War.
Last month, Trump told a crowd of supporters that the remains of 200 people had “been sent back,” but U.S. military officials later said that was not the case.
Meanwhile, as we all know by now, North Korea is enhancing its nuclear research capabilities, not winding them down.
So two world leaders who do nothing but lie and who care only about political optics had a summit, and nothing tangible came of it? And it appears that nothing ever will? Talk about unforeseeable black swan events! OMG!
None of this really matters, of course. Trump got what he wanted: His troglodyte horde is convinced he did something in North Korea, and they’ll never be convinced otherwise. And Kim Jong Un got a goldmine of propaganda that he can exploit for decades.
So the winners are our wannabe dictator and North Korea’s actual dictator. The losers are anyone who cares about global peace and stability.
MAGA, baby!
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