Kim Jong Un: “Great negotiator… Good personality… Loves his people.”

 

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20

I’ll make this brief. My disappointment is so great, if I say too much, I’ll end up saying too much, if you know what I mean.

I applaud at least the symbolism of the Singapore summit this week between the two world leaders. I appreciate that Mr. Trump and Kim Jong Un got together and talked. More times than not talk is a good thing. There’s no hope for getting on the same page if you don’t at least look at the page together. Was it primarily a photo op for both men? Indubitably. Still between camera clicks they talked and I’m for that. BUT…

You knew the “but” was coming didn’t you?

I get why Mr. Trump focused on nuclear disarmament (which Kim will never do, BTW) and not so much on human rights violations in North Korea. One thing at a time, I suppose. But here’s the “but”––– in defense of Kim’s record of inhumanity to man said some outrageous things. On Fox News of all places he blurted out:

“Hey, when you take over a 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, that’s one in 10,000 could do that…”

So, his youth and his tough job explain why he no recourse but to exterminate, enslave, torture, imprison, rape, force abortions, and starve his own people! Thanks, Mr. President for clearing that up. He’s young and inexperienced so he holds over 120,000 of his own citizens in forced labor camps for crimes as innocuous as listening to a radio station not sanctioned by the state.

The president went on to laud the North Korean dictator: “He’s a very smart guy, a great negotiator and I think we understand each other.”

Having executed over 300 people who were a political threat to him, for my money, doesn’t make Kim a “great negotiator,” it makes him a ruthless demagogue. And what does that say about our president that he and Kim “understand each other”? Really? I can’t say that that gives me warm fuzzy feelings for either of them.

Fox News’ host, Bret Baier, pressed him on it a little:

“But he’s still done some really bad things.” To which our president replied: “Yeah, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things. I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”

I want to go on record that I have done a lot of bad things in my life, but torturing my neighbors isn’t one of them and it’s not on my bucket list. And even if I were a murderous scoundrel, does that give Kim, in Mr. Trump’s mind, a pass for his atrocities?

Later in a Sean Hannity interview Mr. Trump went on to spread his praise on Kim even thicker, “He’s got a very good personality, he’s funny, and he’s very, very smart… we got along very well… we had great chemistry.”

I don’t know what you would consider to be a “good personality,” but I don’t usually associate it with genocidal maniacs. Kim had one of his own cabinet members killed in front of a firing squad after showing “disrespectful posture” in a meeting. And when one of his generals fell asleep in a meeting, he was executed with an antiaircraft gun! Does our president even know what a “good personality” looks like? And what could possibly make for “great chemistry” between them? That’s the kind of chemistry that has the potential to blow stuff up!

“He loves his people.” OK, now you’re really scaring me! That’s what our POTUS said of Kim to Greta Van Susteren of VOA. Maybe he just meant Kim loves the ones he hasn’t yet jailed, tortured, or murdered for disrespect of his good name!

If he loves his people so much why doesn’t he even love his own family members enough to not murder them? He had his own brother assassinated with lethal chemicals rubbed on his face in an airport. Then he executed his uncle and incinerated his body with flame throwers! If that’s loving his people, I’d hate to see what hating them would look like.

She went on to ask him what he would say to the citizens of North Korea. And I’m not making this up. He said, “Well, I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them (his citizens). He wants to do right by them.” In case anyone has those kinds of “great feelings” for me, please keep them to yourself.

And for you Christian Trump-defenders out there, so delighted with our president claims to prioritize “religious liberty,” you should know that for Christians there’s no country in the world more dangerous than North Korea! If they’re are not killed on the spot, just for possessing a Bible, they’re indefinitely deported to labor camps, the likes of which have been compared to the Hitler’s concentration camps, as political criminals. I guess, for Mr. Trump, religious liberty stops, where everything else stops for him, at the U.S. border.

In case you’re working on your mental jujitsu and chalking Mr. Trump’s speech up to the rhetoric of a great negotiator, I refer you to a few months back, when in stark contrast, he referred to Kim disparagingly as “Little Rocket Man” and threatened “fire and fury as the world has never seen.”

After the summit he told Hannity he believed that his tough talk intimidated Kim to the table. (For the record, I don’t think it had any bearing on it.) “So, I think the rhetoric,” Trump said, “I hated to do it. Sometimes I felt foolish doing it. But we had no choice.” For my record, our president hates belching out bravado like he hates hearing the cheers of “Noble Peace Prize!” in his pep rallies.

So, which tactic––threatening or flattering––is rhetoric? Or are they both just unbridled pomposity? I appreciate neither, especially from the voice box of the leader of the free world.

For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Romans 16:18

You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. 1 Thessalonians 2:5