(2) Tim Shorrock - For the benefit of people who don't get the Wall...

(2) Tim Shorrock - For the benefit of people who don't get the Wall...




Tim Shorrock added 2 new photos.
1 hr ·



For the benefit of people who don't get the Wall Street Journal, Trump's interview about Kim Jong Un has to be read to be believed. https://www.wsj.com/…/donald-trump-signals-openness-to-nort…
===========

Jan. 11, 2018 4:18 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—

President Donald Trump suggested he has developed a positive relationship with North Korea’s leader despite their mutual public insults, signaling a possible new openness to diplomacy after months of escalating tensions over the rogue state’s nuclear program.

“I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” Mr. Trump said in an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal. “I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised.”

Asked if he has spoken with Mr. Kim, Mr. Trump said: ”I don’t want to comment on it. I’m not saying I have or haven’t. I just don’t want to comment.”

Mr. Trump’s new comments on North Korea, with which the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations, came amid a wide-ranging, 45-minute interview in the Oval Office. Seated behind the Resolute Desk, dressed in a dark blue suit, a white-and-blue striped tie and a white shirt with “45” monogrammed on the sleeves (a reference to his status as the 45th U.S. president), Mr. Trump talked about several aspects of the first year of his presidency...

On North Korea, Mr. Trump has called the nation’s leader a “maniac,” a “bad dude,” mocked him as “short and fat,” and referred to him repeatedly as “rocket man.” For his part, Mr. Kim has warned he would “tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire,” referring to Mr. Trump.
--------

Mr. Trump framed his own comments as part of a broader strategy.

“You’ll see that a lot with me,” he said about combative tweets, “and then all of the sudden somebody’s my best friend. I could give you 20 examples. You could give me 30. I’m a very flexible person.”

It’s been a decade since the U.S. engaged in formal talks with North Korean officials. Those “six-party talks” over North Korea’s nuclear ambition, which included South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, stalled in 2009 in disputes about North Korean nuclear and missile activity.

Since then, diplomats say, there have been messages transmitted back and forth through unofficial channels, including “Track 2” talks in which former U.S. officials and Korea experts have met informally with North Korean officials. But those talks don’t amount to official diplomatic communications. In October, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, without elaborating, that “we have lines of communication to Pyongyang—we’re not in a dark situation, a blackout.”

Mr. Trump has vacillated between seeming open to—and even eager for—diplomacy with North Korea, and dismissing the need or value for it. Soon after taking office, last May, he said in a Bloomberg News interview that he would be “honored” to meet with Mr. Kim. One top former U.S. official said afterwards that Mr. Trump’s statement came in response to pleas from China that he open the door to diplomacy with the young North Korean leader.

But since then, Mr. Trump has also seemed to dismiss the value of direct talks with North Korea and its leader. In October, he appeared to undercut Mr. Tillerson when the secretary referred to lines of communication to North Korea and said the administration was “probing” for diplomatic openings. In response, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Mr. Tillerson is “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”

In the interview, Mr. Trump praised China for help pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear problem, while adding “they can do much more.”

Some U.S. and allied officials have feared that the recent North Korean opening to talks with South Korea, and the resulting talks that began this week, were designed to drive a wedge between the U.S. and South Korea by opening a diplomatic channel that precluded Washington. That step, some have thought, might have been designed to lower tensions with South Korea in hopes the government in Seoul would, in turn, close the door to any potential military moves against its nuclear and missile facilities by the U.S.

South Korea and the United States recently agreed to postpone additional military exercises until after the Olympics next month in Seoul, a move that Mr. Trump said “sends a good message to North Korea.”

The president encouraged North Korea’s participation in those games, and acknowledged that Pyongyang may be trying to separate Washington and Seoul. “If I were them, I would try,” he said.

“The difference is I’m president, other people aren’t,” he said. “And I know more about wedges than any human being that’s lived.”