Why Trump ‘fell in love’ with Kim Jong Un

It’s easy to see why Trump says he “fell in love” with Kim Jong Un. The two men have so much in common.Both are obsessed with posting photos of themselves wherever they can.Both believe they are experts in everything, particularly things they know nothing about. Trump’s latest insane absurdity was to demand that the Navy relocate the command tower on our aircraft carriers so they’ll look more like they did in World War II, and replace the modern plane catapults with steam-powered ones. (But he makes so many insane demands there may be new ones by the time this is posted.)Both govern by slogans, many of them instructing their citizens whom to hate.Both falsify their country’s history, Trump by trying to erase it, and actually doing so, and Kim, the third generation of a family of tyrants, by, among other things, claiming that his daddy, Kim Jong Il, was born on Mount Paektu, home of the mythological birthplace of the first Korean kingdom, in 2333 B.C., rather than his real birthplace, Khabarovsk, in Russia.Both Kim and Trump yammer incessantly about imaginary threats from “class enemies” (capitalists and Democrats), and both pursue these imaginary enemies through show trials and guilt by association.Both fail to acknowledge real crises their countries face — economic and health crises particularly.Both prohibit and punish science that does not fall in line with their peculiar, ignorant beliefs.Both have militarized their borders, at great cost to their countries.Both ban books — thousands of books.Both demonize and prosecute small businesses: Lately for Trump, a food truck owner in Southern California, though he’s given free passes and pardons to billionaires who’ve swiped tens of millions of dollars.Both wail about small-time corruption, while massively enriching themselves.Both make it as difficult as they can for citizens to hold their government to account.Accurate statistics about anything are virtually impossible to get out of North Korea, while Trump has deleted 28 U.S. databases and censored another 338, according to dataindex.us, which tracks such things.The most-censored U.S. data sets involve health (158), education (24), veterans (20), immigration (20), and labor (17). Not surprisingly, thanks to Bobby Kennedy Jr., our most-censored sites were from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Both are incapable of normal speech but emote through pontification.Both live in a fantasy world, separated from reality by sycophants and liars.Now let’s get specific.At Trump’s demand, the U.S. Army curtailed drills with the South Korean army six days early this week, because, Trump said, he has a “very good relationship” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and military drills with South Korea are “hostile” toward North Korea.Neither U.S. nor South Korean officials were advised of Trump’s order before he issued it.He described Kim’s North Korea as “unthreatening and respectful,” and said that U.S. military drills with South Korea “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to what is universally viewed as the world’s most repressive dictatorship.He amped up threats against South Korea in a tirade: “We have 39,000 soldiers over there [actually, 28,500], guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran,” he said, according to the BBC.A “very easy military operation in Iran,” hey? Holy cow, Batman! Then why is that war in its sixth month, with no end in sight?North Korea already has about 60 nuclear weapons (57, Trump says), the U.S. estimates, and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. Kim has threatened to use those weapons against us, more than once.And though Trump sent the United States to war against Iran, ostensibly because it appeared to be on the threshold of obtaining a single nuclear bomb, he has coddled Kim Jong Un, posting as recently as Saturday, Aug. 15: “Kim Jong Un and I get along GREAT!”That’s swell, I suppose, but the criteria for a U.S. president’s foreign policy, it seems to me, should be whether a foreign nation overtly threatens us with nuclear attack, rather than whether the president likes a guy.North Korea sent 14,000 soldiers to Russia’s Kursk region in 2024, and is believed to be sending another 50,000, though Trump declares that it’s South Korea that is hostile.I could go on, but why? It’s a truism of history that whether they claim to rule from the left or the right, all fascists are alike.(Links to sources in this article tend to be to The Guardian (U.S.) or the BBC because they are free news sites, while New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal articles are posted behind paywalls, and inaccessible to nonsubscribers. Reports in those newspapers resemble those in The Guardian.)Categories / Op-Ed, PoliticsSubscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads