For the Record: Pompeo Seeks Peace

Montage by Alice Wielinga/Time.

Speaking of North Korea, I think I may have just noticed something significant, stimulated by a Twitter friend:

I imagine Trump's demanding that people stop calling him a loser from the Singapore summit. Fox ran a story on DPRK missile plant expansion July 2 https://t.co/vYFuaEYTuC, state department announced Pompeo trip July 2 https://t.co/ePU0QsFhww

— ParticularVernacular (@Yastreblyansky) July 8, 2018

Namely, as you see, that Fox's first story on how North Korea was not doing anything to "denuclearize" and was in fact going back to building up forces appeared on the same day as the State Department announcement that Pompeo was going back for a visit to Pyongyang. And the next day that Trump tweeted for the last time (so far) on the subject:

Many good conversations with North Korea-it is going well! In the meantime, no Rocket Launches or Nuclear Testing in 8 months. All of Asia is thrilled. Only the Opposition Party, which includes the Fake News, is complaining. If not for me, we would now be at War with North Korea!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2018

Optimistic, as ever. "If not for me, I would have started a War with North Korea by now!" He's such a consummate dealmaker he can even snooker himself!

Yes, my guess it was the Assistant Manager being told to go out and ask the customer to please return the purchased product but also that there would be no refund. He knows it won't work but gotta try for the Manager.

— El Çid (@EnBuenora) July 8, 2018

Trump must have seen the story first thing in the morning, spent all day screaming at Pompeo about what a shitty job he was doing, and ordered him back to fix it up right away. Hence the stupidity of the list of negotiating demands:

If it was so important to achieve some result with NK, why did (reportedly) Pompeo present nothing more than a list of denuclearization tasks for NK and to know when they'd fulfill them? How is *that* negotiation by any definition? https://t.co/5Xxy3CTGni

— El Çid (@EnBuenora) July 8, 2018

it wasn't! It was important to achieve a result with Fox, and this was the best Pompeo could do. This is how we live now.

— ParticularVernacular (@Yastreblyansky) July 8, 2018

And the idiot list of demands was all they could produce at short notice. Probably cribbed from some Obama administration document.

— ParticularVernacular (@Yastreblyansky) July 8, 2018

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.