North Korea and the Media
It’s the right church, wrong pew when it comes to predictions of the media’s reporting on North Korea. Of course, Donald Trump is getting zero credit, but Mother Nature is nowhere to be found. Apparently the media didn’t get the memo that the mountain fell down and China is not happy about it.
It’s the right church, wrong pew when it comes to predictions of the media’s reporting on North Korea. Of course, Donald Trump is getting zero credit, but Mother Nature is nowhere to be found. Apparently the media didn’t get the memo that the mountain fell down and China is not happy about it.
Two media themes emerged. First, the lion’s share of the credit for advancing the ball on a North Korea deal goes to — drum roll — Kim Jong-un! (Let me show you my shocked face.) The silver medal goes to his sister. The other theme is that Kim has been so brilliant in setting all this up and playing Trump that the biggest risk in the negotiations is that Trump is so desperate to declare victory that he will give away the ranch — all because of that wise 34-year-old.
The best the media can do for Trump is the damning-with-faint-praise article in The New York Times in which Trump is said to have displayed “greater energy” than his predecessor on North Korea.
Interestingly, even China is being given bit-player status, which is simply silly because no deal would have advanced this far without the party holding the economic and regime change cards being smack in the middle. The main difference between these negotiations and those of prior administrations is that the two key counterparties — North Korea and China — have come to believe that Trump is just crazy enough to act militarily (thank you, Syrian chemical weapons and the Russian mercenary attack).
That has forced China to play along since a war on the peninsula is its worst nightmare, and it allowed the sanctions to really bite. I suspect that there is some grand secret bargain between Trump and China — maybe something like, “You play hardball with Kim, and when we get all the nukes out with total verification, I’ll withdraw some troops from the South.” Not enough to signal abandonment, but enough to give China a face-saving win.
All the signs point to a real opportunity for a deal. But we have been to this movie before, and to quote Yogi, it ain’t over til it’s over. There will be lots of twists and turns as negotiations heat up, but without Trump, we would be back trying to figure out how best to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea. My suggestion for the day is to trust your lyin’ eyes as things progress and tune out the media spin.
