It’s the Morning After and Trump Has a New Dictator to Admire

So how does the world look the morning after a sitting U.S. president has sought out legitimacy for the rogue regime of North Korea?

It’s about what we expected, to be honest. North Korea walked away with everything. The U.S. – thanks to the incompetence of Donald Trump – comes away from it with nothing.

Our president sat down with a murderous tyrant, who imprisons and tortures his own people, forces women to have abortions, and every manner of evil. He sat down with a man who is committing atrocities on the level of Nazi Germany, and came away praising him.

Speaking to reporters in Singapore after his landmark summit with Kim, Trump said that he found the North Korean premier to be a “very talented man” who “loves his country very much.”

Again – he starves his people. He imprisons and tortures his people. He locks away Christians in prison camps and subjects them to beatings and horrific conditions, if they’re caught with something as simple as a Bible verse. Is that love for his country?

He’s killed his own family members to hold onto power. Maybe ask some of the North Korean defectors about Kim’s “love” for his country.

At the signing ceremony, Trump said that it was an “honor” to meet Kim, and asserted that the two countries had developed a “very special bond.”

“I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean peninsula is going to be a very different situation than it has in the past,” he said. “We’ve developed a very special bond.”

Every president that has gotten the same reassurances from North Korea in the past probably felt that same “very special bond.”

Ok. Maybe not. We’ve never been saddled with a more incompetent, corrupt president in our history.

Let’s not forget that he’s not just dancing for Russia and China, anymore. Trump is now making conciliatory gestures towards North Korea – all after he has left the relationship with our allies in the world in shambles, over the weekend.

On Monday, I discussed the human rights abuses in North Korea and hoped that the issue would be on the table.

Almost immediately after I posted that discussion, the word emerged that for this initial meeting, there would be no talk of North Korea’s human rights abuses.

I sat in on a teleconference with members of Open Doors USA Monday night, to pray for the summit and for the people of North Korea. In particular, we prayed for the Christians of North Korea who are under such persecution, and for all the human rights abuses that need to end, in order that the people can know what it is to live free.

We may not know for awhile how Father God intends to act on those prayers, but we can probably assume Donald Trump won’t be the blunt tool used to create the kind of peace and freedom in the region that is needed to move forward.

A reporter asked Trump on Tuesday morning about the human rights abuses of North Korea.

“You at that point said that North Korea has more brutally oppressed its people than any regime on Earth,” the reporter asked, referencing Trump’s January State of the Union address.

Trump said at the time that the regime was a “cruel dictatorship” and called Kim a “depraved character.”

“Do you still believe that is the case having sat down with Kim Jong Un?” the reporter asked the president.

Well, does he?

“I believe it’s a rough situation over there,” Trump said during a press conference. “It’s rough in a lot of places, by the way, not just there.”

Ok. Sure. We’ve seen this kind of moral deflection from Trump before, when questioned about the corruption and unsavory conduct of Russia. At that time, he basically reminded the reporter that the United States didn’t have clean hands, either.

Reporter: You at that point said that North Korea has more brutally oppressed its people than any regime on Earth. Do you still believe that's the case?

Trump: I believe it's a rough situation over there. It's rough in a lot of places, by the way, not just there. pic.twitter.com/PmlFAbLTiE

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 12, 2018

What we’re getting out of Trump when faced with hardened tyrants is acquiescence, not leadership.

We certainly didn’t get anything from the summit.

Kim agreed to “work towards” denuclearization, which means nothing.

The statement refers to denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula, North Korea’s favored language. And while the United States in the past has demanded so-called CVID — or complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization — the statement does not include the words “verifiable” and “irreversible.”

Asked whether the exclusion of those two words was a concession, Trump said “not at all.”

He further said “methods” for denuclearization were discussed.

As it was only Trump and Kim, along with an interpreter present, I can tell you the “methods” discussed very likely included Kim telling Trump they’d unplug their nukes and he agreed that that sounded good.

Trump agreed to end the readiness drills with South Korea. He stopped short of saying we would remove our troops from the region.

“Can you ensure anything?” Trump said after the first-ever summit between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. “Can I ensure that you’re going to be able to sit down properly when you sit down? You can’t ensure anything. All I can say is they want to make a deal. That’s what I do. My whole life has been deals. I’ve done great at it. That’s what I do. And I know when somebody wants to deal, and I know when somebody doesn’t.”

Somewhere, a MAGA warrior is hearing that mish-mash, clutching his commemorative coin and swooning.