President Donald Trump is drawing vehement criticism from both the left and the right after cutting U.S. military drills with South Korea while boasting about his “very good relationship” with North Korea’s communist dictator, Kim Jong Un. Trump suggested that he is negotiating with Jong Un and might be meeting with him in 2027. But according to Daily Beast reporter Will Neal, Trump’s “attempt to curry favor with Kim Jong Un received an embarrassing response from Pyongyang.”
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Neal notes that Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, in an official statement, “dismissed outright any talk of correspondence.”
Yo Jong said, “As for reports coming out of Washington that there has recently been communication between the leaders of North Korea and the United States, I know absolutely nothing about it. And it would probably be the only matter related to our supreme leadership’s foreign policy of which I am unaware.”
The communist dictator’s sister added that reports of Trump/Jong Un meeting are “not even worth commenting on” and argued that cutting U.S. military drills in South Korea drills does not make the drills any less “provocative and aggressive.”
“If the U.S. side calculates that it can portray the measures it has recently taken as some kind of ‘goodwill gesture,'” Yo Jong said in her biting statement, “it will not get the response it wants.”
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Neal reports, “The situation escalated hours later when Pyongyang launched around 10 short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, South Korea’s military said Thursday. Trump is gunning to revisit talks with North Korea after meeting with Kim Jong Un three times during his first term in a bid to denuclearize the Hermit Kingdom. His need for a diplomatic win has only become more urgent as the president now barrels toward midterm elections overshadowed by his ongoing war with Iran over its nuclear program. The U.S. president pledged that conflict would last a ‘few weeks’ when he started it in February. Almost six months later, there’s no end in sight, and the president has privately admitted he might have to abandon his demands about Tehran’s nuclear capabilities altogether.”
Neal points out that Trump’s “latest overtures to the Kim regime have included canceling two major annual joint military exercises with South Korea.”
“He said on Monday that continuing with those drills, which North Korea has always decried as practice runs for an invasion, would have been ‘inappropriate and hostile,'” Neal observes. “The exercises remain ongoing but will now end by Friday, six days ahead of schedule.”
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