General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt's so painfully obvious now that Trump genuinely admires and identifies with Kim Jong Un.
Take this quote from the Bret Baier interview, where Trump immediately deflects and pivots from a question about Kim executing political prisoners:
"He's a tough guy . . . Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don't care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have ....If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean that's one in 10,000 that could do that. So he's a very smart guy, he's a great negotiator. ButI think we understand each other."
So, Kim had a tough, demanding father and took over his country when he was 27 and that, in and of itself, was a remarkable achievement that only one in ten thousand could pull off, and that fact made him "a very smart guy" and "a great negotiator", and any deviations from normal ethical or moral behavior are immediately deemed secondary to being "tough."
Could he possibly, just possibly, maybe be talking about someone else in additional to Kim Jong Un when he said this?
Lemme see.
Donald Trump had a father, Fred Trump, who had a tough as balls mentality and who ran his company fast and lose with morals. Donald Trump took over the family company in his late 20s and immediately set out to brand himself as a tough negotiator.
It couldn't be any more transparent if it were a pane glass window.
And the sad fact of the matter is Kim Jong Un is far from remarkable. His father and grandfather created a society where they were literally treated like deities by their people and given free reign to do whatever they wanted. The power structure they built around them was fiercely loyal and the price for any sort of dissent was fatal. Kim Jong Un had the virtue of being born the son of the North Korean leader, and when his dad died, nothing at all needed to change for him.
The idea that Kim Jong Un somehow had 1 in 10,000 talents to get to where he did is so beyond insulting.
But both Kim and Donald were born on third base and I think there's an incessant need for them to "prove" themselves that they are actually smart and talented and not just entitled people born into the situation life gave them.
Now, if you want to talk about a foreign leader who happened to be the son of a former leader, but who worked himself up the rungs of politics and got himself democratically elected, and governs his country with ethics and dignity and compassion....well, there's Justin Trudeau. But Trump's administration told us "there's a special place in hell" for him, so that pretty much sums up how Donald Trump sees people.
PubliusEnigma
(1,583 posts)First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...the *President of the United States*--supposedly--openly admires the worst tyrant on earth. Compared to Kim, Fidel, say, was an angel. Compared to Kim, Putin is Jefferson. Kim is comparable to Stalin, or Mao, or the "Emperor" Bokassa. (Adolf remains sui generis. No one is comparable to him.) Roosevelt had to deal with Stalin, to win World War Two. Nixon had to deal with Mao, to realign the Cold War. But neither of those men admired their partners, or their regimes. Trump does. God help us.
Response to Tommy_Carcetti (Original post)
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greyl
(22,990 posts)I'm not sure Donald has the capacity to actually admire anything.