Today North Korea broke off a meeting with South Korea because of a military exercise coming up by South Korea, the US, and a cast of thousands. Just now,
BREAKING: KCNA says North Korea will "reconsider" summit with Trump if U.S. insists on it giving up nuclear program, says it will never give up its nuclear program in exchange for economic trade with the United States
— Josh Smith (@joshjonsmith) May 16, 2018
Whiplash alert: North Korea says maybe it will hold that summit with Trump — but only if Washington stops unilaterally insisting that it gives up its nuclear program and only if they stop harping on about Libya. This comes from Kim Kye Gwan so carries a lot of weight
— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) May 16, 2018
I think I said something a few days ago on Twitter if not here, and so did Adam, that “denuclearization” did not mean what Trump and company thought it did. Now North Korea is saying it.
Will tomorrow morning’s executive time bring tweets about the fake news media, Little Rocket Man, or something else? Stay tuned.
Corner Stone
As I said previously:
Corner Stone
NK is master class trolling this fucking buffoon Trump. This is like DougJ old school style sticking the shiv in. Except for the nukes, I mean.
Corner Stone
B.B.A.
Trump would have offered Kim the entire peninsula in exchange for putting his name in big, beautiful gold letters on the Ryugyong Hotel. But I guess we’re going to be spared that spectacle now.
jayjaybear
The Ryugyong is actually pretty perfect for Trump. YUUUGE, ugly and tacky as sin.
Cheryl Rofer
Earlier today, a couple of my colleagues predicted pretty much exactly this.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
B-b-but the South Korean President said Trump could have the Nobel Peace Prize!
This literally a justification a Trump supporter made (even though they tried to give off the impression of being a high-minded independent defending free speech from the rabid leftist hordes and the evil Leftist Silicon Valley Coporations like Facebook and Twitter) to me a week ago on YouTube. I posted this to the thread several hours ago. Crickets. They also tended to ignore points I was making and would use other arguments for other issues.
B.B.A.
@jayjaybear: Plus structurally deficient and unlikely to ever open.
Cheryl Rofer
NotMax
Dolt 45 administration will take out a few commas, randomly capitalize a few words and present the otherwise unaltered Clinton era deal as a brand new, greatest ever in history proposal.
Omnes Omnibus
This is as helpful as anything.
@Corner Stone: Is Seattle really worth damaging Trump market value? Seriously, they throw fish and do really muddy mixes.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
The idiot is so desperate for a win that, for just this one time, he’ll be the one doing the micturation.
Of course NK was gonna reel him in like a fucking hooked fish. These people are not dummies. They can read him well. They know that after dreaming of (and boasting publicly about) a Nobel, something his illustrious predecessor regarded with bemusement, the idiot is slobbering for one. He’ll do anything now to not let this mirage of a victory slip from his grasp.
jonas
Lulz! But they told Mike Pompeo they “share the same objectives” as the American people! How can they now claim they didn’t intend to unilaterally disarm? I’m sure a lot of people in Trumpland are very confused tonight.
Trump’s MO is always: 1. Bullshit. 2. ??? 3. Affirm total victory!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Did somebody tell the North Koreans about Infrastructure Week, and they just want to get in on the meme?
ETA: I know it happened seven or eight years ago last week, but I’m still not over trump thanking Kim for treating the people he took prisoner excellently
Platonailedit
Little rocket MAN.
Dotard.
Fin.
Cheryl Rofer
Anyone who has ever bought a car should have seen this coming.
jonas
@jayjaybear:
Probably doesn’t have fire sprinklers, either.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
This fucking president is such a tool. He just set himself up for Kim to make him look like a feckless, gutless idiot. In all fairness, that’s an easy undertaking, since Manbaby is a feckless, gutless idiot.
Yarrow
@Cheryl Rofer:
Oh, great. Are we going to bomb North Korea too?
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: I was just wondering if Bolton’s BS subtexting around had something to do with it.
I typed a comment recently that Bolton’s repeated mention of Iraq and Lybia when he talked about NK almost seemed like not so subtle taunting. Not that Bolton was getting in the way of a brilliant plan by Trump that promised great success.
The best we can hope for is that the Trumpsters stumble and bumble flummoxed through the midterms. I guess would be good if they get punked and fume about it right before the midterms, But best thing would be for Trump to just get distracted and forget about it, except then someone would wave Iran in front of him.
Man, anything the Trumpsters do in foreign affairs and international security makes my skin crawl. Anything.
Maybe if we can get to NFL exhibition season, Trump will go apeshit over players kneeling again, and foreign policy will go on ice for a while.
Jager
Off topic, but my oldest grandchild is 26 today and graduates from law school on Saturday, she’ll take a break and then begin her clerkship with a Federal judge. What a kid! It’s good to be old. (sometimes)
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
What did Donny Dollhands build it? Has all his hallmarks…
NotMax
@Cheryl Rofer
And here we thought it applied only to RMN.
:)
jl
@Yarrow: Trump thinks Bolton has an ugly non-central casting ‘stache. So, might not take much for him to get tossed out.
Aleta
Thanks Cheryl.
sdhays
What?!?? But he treated those
hostagesguests so beautifully? How could this happen???mai naem mobile
Hard to win the Nobel Prize when you pass the deadline for the nomination. Don’t bother for next year because Trumpkins have the attention span of an immature gnat.
kd bart
Played for a fool.
NotMax
Rudy’s been awfully quite. Shipment of ball gags must have arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Yarrow
@jl: True. If Bolton is seen as a failure, Trump might get rid of him.
sdhays
@B.B.A.:
I wonder how much Kim Jong Un realizes how much this is true.
NotMax
@NotMax
Ack!
quiet, not quite
Cheryl Rofer
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Trump can’t believe they’re actually going to make him pay for the undercoat. ?
Major Major Major Major
@Cheryl Rofer: ouch.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: That is indeed some master class-level trolling right there. CUT A DEAL WITH US NO MATTER HOW SHITTY OR REMAIN IN THE BOTTOM TIER OF YOUR PRESIDENTZ 4EVER!!!
And he’ll fall for it, too.
Time to do the right thing here, Deep State.
jl
@Yarrow: Also, US pulling out of Iran deal might have something to do with it. Bolton’s BSubtexting plus facts on the ground that Trump is willing to renege. Plus fact that Israel decided to mess around with Iranian proxies immediately after Trump pulled out of Iran deal.
I find it hard to believe that NK would tease around to get more concessions, since their approach seemed to have been working so well. Maybe they think they smell a rat. They would be right, and it takes one to know one, so maybe that’s it.
Edit: so far, NK is going about it a way that suggests they want to stall or put on ice, not another aspect of their gambit. But we will see.
Major Major Major Major
@jl: the Iran deal almost certainly has something to do with this.
One does wonder if Bolton has been egging him on to dump Iran and shit on NK in order to advance his agenda.
Jeffro
@jonas:
aka Government by (orange) Underpants Gnomes…if “kakistocracy” is defined as rule by the worst, I supposed this would be “tanger-gnom-ocracy”? “Gnomango-ocracy”?
Or just, “sucks”
Cheryl Rofer
Trump told the Europeans that Iran would just fold after he slapped them around a bit, just like North Korea did.
Oh well.
The Europeans and Iran met today and put something together to get around US sanctions. I don’t know much more than that right now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
according to MSNBC, testimony is the remembered but not yet recovered email was from Papdopolous
Cheryl Rofer
@Mnemosyne: You got it.
NotMax
@jl
Israel also was bombing Iranian positions in Syria before Dolt 45’s announcement.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Bolton and Trump are used to being able to bully people because they have more power and/or more money. They blundered into this assuming that their usual tactics would work, but they forgot that we don’t really have much to hold over NK. Now they’re floundering, because they have no idea what else to do except bully louder.
Chet Murthy
Cheryl, I remember when you wrote it, and it was (to me) very perceptive. So much about this is comical (when it’s not depressing). The -idea- that Kim would give up his nukes, knowing what happened to Ghaddafi and Saddam Hussein, what is in-plan for Iran: what monumental idiocy.
jl
@Major Major Major Major: I think any reasonably informed somewhat thoughtful person would see parallels between Iran action, and what Israel did right after, and Korean peninsula. Even Dub would. But we have Trump now.
Trumpsters are such a nightmare in foreign affairs, best we can hope for is shambling confusion on NK and Iran for the time being., IMHO..
jl
@NotMax: You mean recently? If so, thanks for info, I didn’t know that. I guess for some reason it made the news after the US pulled out of the deal.
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: Hehe.
Relatedly, Trump’s Ferrari disappoints at Florida Auction (from 2017):
Yeah, Donnie no longer owned the car, but still. ;-)
Donnie isn’t good at making deals, and people across the table from him know it.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“How stupid do you have to be to publish a book that tells your adversaries how you ‘win’ a deal?”)
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: Bolton: “I got an entire COUNTRY to hate on me? BY NAME, MULTIPLE TIMES??” Siiiiiiiighhhhhh…
What? It’s what he wants, after all. Isn’t he one of the higher-ups in the neocon death cult at this point? Even Kristol is like, “yer nutz, dood”…
Cheryl Rofer
@Another Scott: A wise man told me never to demonstrate your card magic tricks to the guys you play poker with.
NotMax
@jl
Yup. Was mentioned several times here in comments, including Israel expecting retaliation before Dolt 45’s JCPOA debacle.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I wonder if the Russians are still astonished by how eager Americans were to believe the worst about Hillary Clinton. Their intelligence is good enough to know that all of the bullshit about her being “crooked” is bullshit, and yet Americans were falling all over themselves to eat up the anti-Hillary propaganda. Urgh.
Cheryl Rofer
NotMax
@Jeffro
Little off his rocker man.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: “Reality has a way of asserting itself” – PBO
In this case, a very ‘real’ Iran goes, “hey Europe, you’re still good with our deal?” And Europe goes, “oui, mein freund – muy bueno!” And so Iran drops trou at the US…
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
Hell, yeah! John Bolton wants to bomb everyone!
(I wish I were kidding.)
Yarrow
In other news, Kilauea is erupting. Alert level is Red/Warning, which appears to be the highest level.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So… does this mean the Trump campaign deleted emails? I thought that was a treasonous offense, coulda sworn I heard that somewhere.
NotMax
Zounds, but is Brian Williams is an idiot.
James Powell
@Jager:
Congrats! Those federal court clerk positions are golden.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: What is puzzling about it is that I read several stories with quotes from Trumpster officials,and analysis agreeing, that they were signaling EDIT: actually no signaling bout outright saying) that they would cave on meaning of denuclearization. EDIT: seemed like Trumpsters thought they could pull one on US public with help of media, and I think they would be correct.
If that is the case, why would NK not go along? They wanted an endzone dance with the US hanging its head before the talks?
Looks like two or three possibilities for NK stinking up the party, and maybe we’ll find out which one it is soon.
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
Trump owneth a Ferrari? To what end? Verily, he driveth not.
Yarrow
@Amir Khalid: Can he not just bomb his own house and leave everyone else out of it?
@NotMax: He really is.
Planetpundit
(T)Rump will rename it the Slingapore Summit ‘cuz his ass will be in one when Un get through with him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax: as my news-addiction has gotten worse, I find myself watching his show,especially on a night like this, but I pretty much tune out his questions, and his tortured attempts be at once folksy and profound.
NotMax
@Yarrow
Repeating, then. USGS Big Island volcano cams.
Airlines have been topping off tanks as a precaution to provide enough extra fuel to divert to Honolulu since shortly after this phase of the eruption began.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
Yikes! I hope they’re able to evacuate everyone safely. IIRC, the gases and ash released by an eruption are more dangerous than the lave flow, but IANAV (vulcanologist).
MisterForkbeard
@NotMax: He IS, but what prompted this particular observation?
NotMax
@MisterForkbeard
Some tripe he spat out about the N. Korea situation that was so insipid (and patently wrong) that it would not stick within my skull, thank goodness.
Cheryl Rofer
@jl: What the Trumpsters have said since the Sunday morning interview programs has been internally inconsistent and at least confusing. Nonproliferation Twitter kicked around some interpretations and did not come to any conclusions. I had lunch with a colleague yesterday, and we talked about how difficult it is even to discuss what the administration may think or do. With Obama or W, you could lay out a range of possible actions or motives from probable to improbable, or favorable to unfavorable, or some other scale. Trump and his toadies might do anything, and the motives seem to change from minute to minute.
Bolton and Pompeo have a history from which we can judge them, but their performance on Sunday was all over the map, and they seemed flustered at times, without answers. They are trying to please The Great Negotiator, of course, and they have no idea what he wants or will do.
There was a slight move toward what one might reasonably expect to be the North Korean position in the past 24 hours or so. But what is happening now is that the Trumpsters were doing a victory dance because (they thought) they have forced Kim into submission. Tonight Kim’s people said no, you stupid bastards, it’s the other way around. So the Trumpsters have to respond to that element too.
NotMax
@Cheryl Rofer
Foreign policy ought never be conducted from skimming Cliff’s Notes.
(Them, not you.)
spudgun
@Jager: Wow, you must be so proud! Congratulations!
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: The story said “he” put 2400 miles on it over 4 years (he sold it in 2011). Dunno who did the actual driving. ;-)
His license expires June 14, 2020
Yikes.
Cheers,
Scott.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks. I don’t have time to follow stuff as closely as you do. I guess I happened to see stories that emphasized the statements that amounted to moving the goal posts.
If Trump were smarter about his malfeasance, he should have gone with the cave and then go an a domestic propaganda campaign to hide the cave. Then he would have had a nice, seeming, victory before the midterms. A lot of the media would fall all over themselves to go along. The resulting inept negotiations could have resulted in trouble down the road, so I wouldn’t have been happy about it, except it would be better for now than a war scare.
So, OK, Trumpsters are incoherent and make no sense. I should have assumed that.
GregB
@Mnemosyne:
I bet Robert Mueller found it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
would I find Kornacki less annoying if i couldn’t see his hammy gesticulation?
NotMax
@
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He has the mile a minute patter down. In a previous life he must have been a tobacco auctioneer.
Mnemosyne
@GregB:
Well, sure, but it’s more that I’m picturing the guys at the FSB standing around going, Can you believe that they actually think the Clinton Foundation is corrupt? How stupid are these Americans, anyway?
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Just remember that the rolled up paper he insists on always holding is a phallic substitute.
Brachiator
@Cheryl Rofer: Some Trump tweet I saw this afternoon and maybe some news story suggests that Trump believes that he has a solid relationship with China, and he can depend upon China to put pressure on North Korea.
It would be very interesting if Trump soft-pedals any response to this little Barb.
Mary G
Yay (WaPo)
randy khan
I’d say I’d stick this one in the Department of Absolutely No Surprise. Of course NK wants something big in return for giving up nukes – it’s hard to see how anyone would think otherwise.
Corner Stone
@randy khan: They will never give up their nukes.
Understand this – Trump broke negotiations with a nuclear free Iran. He sent Sec State Pompeo at least twice to talk peace with NK. That is a loud and clear message, if NK ever needed one (they did not).
Chet Murthy
@randy khan: I remember when Cheryl was introduced as an FPer. She was asked about the rationality of the Kim regime, and answered something like “they’re supremely rational, focusing like a laser on one thing before all others: the long-term survival of the Kim dynasty and regime”. I found this very, very perceptive.
I’m no foreign affairs whiz, but I’ll predict that NOTHING will convince Kim to give up his nukes. NOTHING. They’re his ultimate life preserver.
Cheryl Rofer
@Brachiator: I will note that Kim Jong Un has met with Xi Jinping twice now, most recently a few days before he released this barrage.
GregB
@Mary G:
Fake news! Mooch says Trump is soaring.
Cheryl Rofer
I have two cats on the verge of starvation weakly managing to meow at me for their late-night snack, so I think we’ll pack it in. I’ll check back in the morning to see if there are any more questions.
Chet Murthy
I just had to post this little gem about Spike Lee’s latest flick
DTRT was an awakening for me. I had more to learn, but it was important. Malcolm X was the same. I’m looking forward to this one.
jacy
@Jager:
Congrats!
Busy graduation season here — my son’s fiancee just graduated on Saturday from Xavier with a Doctor’s of Pharmacy, and Kid #4 graduates high school on Thursday, enroute to the Engineering college at LSU. (And my youngest turned 13 last week, meaning my last kid is now a teenager, and making me feel really old….)
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
I once read somewhere that hiring a chauffeur to drive your sports car was like hiring another man to screw your mistress.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Yarrow: We don’t need that silly volcano monitoring program.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Sold it because couldn’t find anyone who would agree to paint it gold?
;)
Joe Miller
@NotMax: HAW!
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Ferrari would have happily painted it gold if Trump had only asked. He’s not their only customer with more money than taste.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: oh that’s a good one. Although I feel like I will just never get to use it.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mary G:
Great news! I’m a little disappointed in Ohio Dems as we cast about 150,000 less votes than the GOP earlier this month.
Adam L Silverman
I do believe this is what you are referring to:
https://balloon-juice.com/2018/05/01/the-nobel-lie-the-us-is-now-superfluous-to-the-future-of-the-korean-peninsula/
Mary G
This is what Hillary was up against:
That’s the first quarter of 2018. In 2016 they weren’t even looking.
Mary G
More good turnout news in PA:
Inventor
@Mnemosyne: What do you mean no floor mats?!
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Trump has issues with buying cars:
https://jalopnik.com/how-donald-trump-got-cadillac-to-build-him-the-most-opu-1764776150
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne:
This is what the National Security Agency is for. I guarantee that Bob Mueller has a copy of the email.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow:
jonas
@Chet Murthy: OF COURSE keeping his nukes is priority #1. The fact that Trump got suckered into agreeing to a summit without realizing this is simply proof that America’s Götterdämmerung is going to be performed by an amateur theater company from Mike Pompeo’s former district.
sukabi
@jonas: NK was as likely to unilaterally disarm as the NRA is to embrace getting AR-15s and similar weapons out of civilian hands.
Mary G
This is part of Boise; they did not have enough ballots for all the Democrats who wanted to vote. The judge said no.
Republicans are all cheaters.
Chet Murthy
@jonas: Yep. I was just noting that Cheryl called it ‘way back then.
Tenar Arha
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No. I frequently listen to the Maddow podcast, & when he substitutes I generally delete it in frustration.
ETA typos
Mnemosyne
@Chet Murthy:
There are still kids who get onto the LA subways with the 2018 version of a boombox, and I still refer to all of them as Radio Raheems (not in their hearing, because teenage boys are delicate creatures who should be granted their dignity). I really hope I don’t sound racist by saying this, because I don’t mean to be.
? Martin
Christ. There have been a total of 3 leaders of North Korea, all related. The entirety of the existence of that country has been focused on one thing – how to preserve the regime, keep foreign influence out (not just the US, but also China, etc.) and get a seat at the table not as some misbehaving child to be dealt with, but as an equal. All they know how to do is exert leverage. If Trump makes it easy, they’ll assume they can get more. They’ve been ratcheting up their position for half a century. They’re experts at this.
Kim is smart enough to realize that the US has no diplomatic planning capacity right now. He knows we have no plan B, and so a move like this will cause chaos in the WH, rather than get a calm but determined response. Everyone but the residents of the WH and political appointees in the State Department seem to be able to see this.
Consider what Ford put together in Operation Paul Bunyan. That was organized and implemented in 3 days. It’ll take them 3 days to pull Trump away from Fox and Friends and his iPhone.
I don’t mind Kim’s approach. Let’s be honest, here – it’s worked. It’s unconscionable to his own people, but it worked. I mind Trumps approach for signaling that he’s okay if NK can nuke everyone in Asia, just so long as he can’t hit California. Granted, there’s a bit of progress in this approach that they feel California is not worth nuking, but it’s hard to make friends when you publicly proclaim to the neighborhood arsonist that everyone else has more flammable houses than you do.
Chet Murthy
@? Martin: Wowsers.
From wikipedia
? Martin
@Chet Murthy: Exactly. Kim pushed hard for the nuke program, and now he has unilateral talks with the US. What’s more, he’s got a US president who is now desperate to have those talks because he put himself in a corner. Nukes gives a country legitimacy. Kim knows this, and Trump proved it by backing out of Iran and agreeing to unilateral talks with NK. If I were running Iran, I’d be calling Kim and asking how much to get a nuke, and how soon can I have it. Fuck, if I were running Lichtenstein I’d probably be doing that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin:
Japan is the foreign influence that most concerns Koreans(both the ROK and DPRK), there’s a very long history there.
Brachiator
@? Martin:
I don’t know. I don’t know if the current leader is as sharp as his predecessor, or is willing to continue to press on. His greatest advantage may be that in Trump he is dealing with someone who is as much a dope as he is.
Kim is nothing without his nukes and the support of China. He could cause great havoc, but after that he would have nothing and could never sustain anything after an initial military attack.
But the destruction he could cause is to be feared.
Trump and his chief advisers are total fools. And so we are waiting to see whether these idiots might actually stumble into something resembling peace. Heaven only knows.
? Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think DPRK distrusts all foreign powers. I think they have pretty good reason to.
@Brachiator: I don’t think Kim is a dope. He seems smart enough to realize that he’d get nowhere diplomatically without the nuke. We’ll see what he can make of it, but so far by the rules of the game that they’re working under, he seems to be doing pretty well by them.
J R in WV
@Jager:
You are so lucky. A successful kid executing their desire for something difficult is so great to witness. We have neighbor/friends whose daughters both went to law school, intent on helping under-served people, and I felt the same way back when they took jobs with NGOs.
Congratulations from the bottom of my heart! Tell her there are a lot of people glad for her success and hoping she continues her success for years to come. We’re still looking for that presidential candidate! (You might not want to go with that last one, no matter how true it is! — ;-) — )
different-church-lady
@jonas:
Which is really just #1, repeated.
different-church-lady
@Mary G: And they still haven’t reckoned with all the consequences of the real accounts.
trnc
This piece doesn’t seem to be aging very well, but in the author’s defense, he did write it over 24 hours ago.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/05/15/president-trump-is-shaking-things-up-in-asia-and-it-just-might-work/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ea594ec705e3
lumpkin
The hook has been set and now the fish is being played
ottercliff
Wait, won’t they give him the Prize for trying? He has probably sunk 20 or 30 mins of his “executive time” into this project already. Fake Prize!! Not fair!!