This is yet another of the many despicable things Donald Trump did that never got the attention it deserves. If you are one of the people who does not remember this tragic story, here’s a summary from the Wikipedia page:
Otto Frederick Warmbier, (December 12, 1994 – June 19, 2017) was an American college student who was imprisoned in North Korea in 2016 on a charge of subversion. In June 2017, he was released by North Korea in a vegetative state and died soon afterward.
Warmbier entered North Korea as part of a guided tour group on December 29, 2015. On January 2, 2016, he was arrested at Pyongyang International Airport while awaiting departure from the country. He was convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel, for which he was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment with hard labor.
Shortly after his sentencing in March 2016, Warmbier suffered a severe neurological injury from an unconfirmed cause and fell into a coma, which lasted over a year. North Korean authorities did not disclose his medical condition until June 2017, when they announced he had fallen into a coma as a result of botulism and a sleeping pill. He was freed later that month, still in a comatose state after 17 months in captivity. He was repatriated to the United States and arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 13, 2017. He was taken to University of Cincinnati Medical Center for immediate evaluation and treatment.
Warmbier never regained consciousness and died on June 19, 2017, six days after his return to the United States when his parents had requested his feeding tube to be removed. A coroner's report stated that he died from an unknown injury causing lack of oxygen to the brain. Non-invasive internal scans did not find any signs of fractures to his skull.
Those are the dry facts. Just by itself sounds pretty bad. When you add in what we don’t know about what happened it’s liable to give you nightmares.
Why did North Korea have to sentence Otto so harshly? What was so terrible about stealing a poster? What exactly happened to him in that North Korean prison? Was he abused? Was he tortured? What was the chain of events in that prison that led to Warmbier becoming a brain-dead husk that died in a clinic without even getting to hear his parents say goodbye to him?
My first impulse is to blame North Korea, to accuse them of cold-blooded murder, but I don’t really know for sure. I suppose none of us will ever know.
Anyway, that’s the background. The disgusting part Donald Trump played in this story came twenty months later. The Fake President was holding a press conference, I think about his failed negotiations with North Korea, when a reporter questioned him about the Warmbier affair. Specifically he wanted to know if Trump had talked to Kim Jong Un about Warmbier and what Un said. Chattering Don spent two minutes babbling out one of his usual twisted answers, and then he finished with an amazing declaration:
He tells me that he did not know about it, and I will take him at his word.
There’s so much wrong with that statement, so very much just plain wrong. You took his word? No FBI investigation, no CIA inquiry, no calling out our intelligence services, no diplomatic actions, no special commissions, no international outreach? YOU TOOK HIS WORD?
And that was just the last sentence. Read a transcript of what Donald said before that sentence and see what you think of it:
What happened is –horrible. I really believe something very bad happened to him and I don’t think that, uh, the top leadership knew about it, and when they had to – send him home-- By the way, I got the prisoners back, I got the hostages back, and Otto was one of the hostages, but Otto came back in, uhh, a shape that was not even to be talked about. Uh, I find it, I thought it was horrible. Now the others came back extremely healthy. But Otto came back in a condition that was just – just terrible. And, I will, I did speak about it, and – uhh – I don’t believe that he would have allowed that to happen. Just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen. Those prisons are rough. They’re rough places. And bad things happened. But I really don’t believe that he was, uhh. He – he. I don’t believe he knew about it.
REPORTER : Did he, did he say – did he tell you that he did not – uhh – did that Kim Jong Un tell you—
He felt badly about it. I did speak to him. He felt very badly, but he knew the case very well. But he knew it later. And – you know, you got a lot of people. Big country. Lot of people. And – in those prisons, in those camps, you have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really, really bad things.
REPORTER : Why are you . . .
But he tells me -- He tells me that he did not know about it, and I will take him at his word.
Every part of that disgusting little monologue was reprehensible. I’m not even going to try to break it down for you. If you can’t see it for yourself, then you need more help than I can give you.
Remember Kate Steinle?
She was a young white woman who was accidentally killed back in 2015 when a drunk illegal immigrant threw down his gun. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and the whole Republican Party raged about the incident. They spent the next sixteen months talking about it.
They treated Steinle’s death like it was the worst thing that had ever happened to America. They brought Kate’s relatives on stage at their national convention to tell everybody to vote for Trump. When he became President Trump created a brand new task force just to target crimes committed by illegal immigrants.
Then comes Otto Warmbier, a young American-born male, not a Saudi journalist, mind you. He visits North Korea and gets a major prison sentence for something people in this country would call petty vandalism. He dies a miserable death and nobody is sure exactly how it happened.
Mr. America First, the man who was going to make every nation in the world fear and respect us, the man who accused Real President Obama of giving in to our enemies, the man who promised he was going to bring the leader of North Korea to heel or else he would rain fire and fury on him like the world had never seen, that man went up to Kim Jong Un and asked:
“Did you have anything to do with this?”
“No I didn’t,” answered Kim.
“Okay.”
God help us all.
Trump and his followers made Kate Steinle a national martyr. Otto Warmbier, however . . .
To Republicans Otto is what George Orwell would call an unperson. He doesn’t exist. Otto, who? Their fervent wish is for everyone in America to forget that name, to never even speak it out loud.
I say I don’t give a Trump promise what the Republicans want. By now our pitiful excuse for a leader must have a thousand scandals to live down, more than any ordinary person can possibly hold in his mind. So don’t try to.
Remember one name, Otto Warmbier, and one Trump sentence, He tells me that he did not know about it, and I will take him at his word. You don’t need anything else. That one statement shows you everything that is wrong about the worst president in history.
In the name of Otto Warmbier, the name that Donald Trump does not dare to say, I ask America to please vote this disgrace out of the White House and out of our lives.