The Kim Con - Trump isn't trying to win over North Korea's leader. He's using him to win over you.

[kpete]

The Kim Con
Trump isn’t trying to win over North Korea’s leader. He’s using him to win over you.
By WILLIAM SALETAN



At the press conference following his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on Tuesday, President Trump called himself “an emissary of the American people” and spoke of “my instinct, my ability, or talent” for negotiation. “My whole life has been deals,” said Trump. “I’ve done great at it.”

Trump is indeed a skilled salesman, and his presentation of the new U.S.–North Korean denuclearization agreement is a fine sales job. But the target of that sales job isn’t Kim. It’s you. Trump and Kim are working together to pass off their toothless pact as a milestone. It’s a con, and you’re the mark.

Three times during his press conference, Trump was asked about North Korea’s failure to honor previous agreements in which it made similar pledges. Each time the question was asked, Trump blamed the collapse of these agreements on previous American presidents. As evidence, Trump claimed that during the summit, Kim had told him that North Korea lacked “confidence” in Trump’s predecessors. In a post-summit interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump said Kim had explained that “he was let down by the United States.” Far from challenging this statement, Trump used it to bolster his argument that no other American president could have worked with North Korea as Trump has. “I don’t think they honestly could have done it,” said Trump.


This is the key to understanding the Trump-Kim relationship: Trump isn’t competing with Kim or even trying to win him over. He’s using Kim to compete for status with previous American presidents. “A lot of people are saying it’s historic,” Trump told Stephanopoulos, referring to the summit. “We’ve done something that’s very unique. Nobody’s met with the [Kim] family … No president has, certainly.”

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Trump isn’t trying to impress Kim. He’s trying to impress you. He starts by lowering the bar, claiming that any summit outcome is better than the nuclear holocaust people feared after Trump escalated the war of words with Pyongyang. “You could have lost, you know, 30, 40, 50 million people” in a nuclear war, Trump pointed out in the press conference. Then, to pad the tally of gains from the summit, Trump double-counts things North Korea had done beforehand: releasing hostages and suspending missile launches. Trump demands extra credit for not giving North Korea $150 billion, which he falsely claims Obama gave up in the nuclear deal with Iran. (Spoiler: It was Iran’s money.)


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MORE:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/trumps-deal-with-kim-jong-un-is-a-con-job-and-youre-the-mark.html

[Cracklin Charlie]

1. Another fail?

Who could have predicted it?

[Thomas Hurt]

2. Been saying this all week....