What did Donald Trump do today?
He outdid himself with praise for Kim Jong-un.
Trump will give North Korea another "meeting of equals" summit in Vietnam later this month. But he is already pledging his support for Kim Jong-un. Today, he said this on Twitter:
Kim has already ruled North Korea since 2011. In that time, he has:
- ordered the murder of at least seven members of his own government, and in some cases, their families
- detained eleven American citizens to use as bargaining chips for a total of 3,941 days, in conditions that led to at least one death
- jailed approximately 120,000 of his own citizens for their political beliefs in prisons where prisoners are
- punitively raped
- starved
- tortured, sometimes to death
- forced approximately 2,640,000 of his own citizens to work under conditions of slavery in "re-education camps"
- sold slave labor outside the country to fund its government
- forced women to have abortions against their will
- conducted at least 26 long-range missile tests, including 16 during Trump's term in office, the most recent of which could likely strike the entire continental United States
- successfully completed testing of several working nuclear weapon designs, and stockpiled about 60 weapons
- got caught planning to hide those weapons while pretending to go along with the disarmament plan Trump believes to exist since his first summit
- got caught continuing to expand and develop the missile program, immediately after pledging not to at the previous Trump-Kim summit
- ransomed the remains of American soldiers killed or captured in the Korean War
- governed a country where, outside of a tiny elite class, citizens are frequently
- malnourished
- suffering from infection by parasitic worms
- constantly surveilled
- prohibited from contacting or learning about the outside world
- Threatened the United States with a nuclear attack if sanctions weren't dropped (since the Singapore summit)
- called the United States "cancerous" and "gangster-like" (since the Singapore summit)
Trump did not explain what about this résumé had particularly impressed him.
Why does this matter?
- Presidents should not praise murderers, hostage takers, dictators, enslavers, human rights abusers, hostile nuclear powers that threaten the United States, rogue states, or incompetent leaders.