Falling in love with love and Kim Jung Un

If this were a Ripley's feature we'd be saying "Believe it Or Not".

Trump’s fawning over North Korean tyrant is a national security issue ~ Editorial echo published in the Nevada newspaper The Las Vegas Sun (with MaineWriter prologue: Falling in Love With Love is Falling for Make Believe by Frank Sinatra)

Falling in Love With LoveCaring too much is juvenile fancy
Learning to trust is just
For children in school
I fell in love with love one night
When the moon was full
I was unwise with eyes
Unable to see

Donald Trump says he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “fell in love” after their meeting this summer, which is incredible when you think about the kind of people Trump has vilified.

That group would include Democrats, the media, women, the European Union, Canadians, immigrants and many, many others~ including the National Football League and Mexicans.

So let’s see, on one hand there’s the leader of a nation that is attacking the U.S. in cyberspace, is working to disrupt our elections, starved its own people and condemned entire families to lifetimes of hard labor in gulags.

On the other are individuals who are loyal to democratic values but simply disagree with Trump on his approach and behavior.

Trump loves one and hates the others.

From this, there’s an important lesson we should all understand: Our enemies don’t need to threaten us with weapons. Instead, all they need to do is weaponize praise for Trump.

Trump’s gushing toward Kim will have a direct impact on U.S. efforts to push North Korea toward denuclearization.

For Kim, it’s a clear sign that Trump won’t be inclined to take a hard line in negotiations, which only threatens to strengthen North Korea’s resistance to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

The timing of Trump’s remarks couldn’t have been worse, either, given that he made them on the same day North Korea’s foreign minister told the United Nations that there was “no way” his country would give up its nukes unless the U.S. eased its sanctions.

Ri Yong Ho told the General Assembly that North Korea had taken such “significant goodwill measures” as dismantling its nuclear test site and stopping missile tests but had seen no “corresponding response” from the U.S.

“Without any trust in the U.S., there will be no confidence in our national security — and under such circumstances, there is no way we will unilaterally disarm ourselves first,” he said.

Now, with Trump expressing his man-crush for Kim, why wouldn’t North Korea strengthen its demand to an end of sanctions? Trump can correctly say that his administration has not given ground on sanctions, and that he backed off from sending U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to North Korea because there had been insufficient progress in negotiations, but meanwhile his glowing words about Kim can only boost North Korea’s resolve.

So much for the art of the deal, at least on Trump’s end. Kim, on the other hand, appears to have played Trump magnificently, no doubt by stroking his ego and feeding his narcissism.

Trump would love for Americans to believe that he and Kim have formed a bond of trust that has made the world a safer place, as Trump famously declared when he tweeted “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea” after his June meeting with Kim.

That wasn’t true then and isn’t true now. And as long as Trump keeps blowing kisses at Kim, there’s no reason to believe North Korea will respond to any pressure to move forward.

No doubt, Trump’s supporters will say he’s being brilliant somehow, perhaps by suggesting he’s keeping friends close and enemies closer. Or maybe they’ll turn to the old excuse for his behavior, and say Americans shouldn’t focus on Trump’s words but rather the actions his administration is taking.

But it’s clearly evident that Trump trembles with pleasure at praise from any enemy. All someone like Kim or Vladimir Putin needs to do is fluff his ego and feed his narcissism with the most florid and preposterous praise, and he responds like a puppy.

Trump’s neediness puts our national security at profound risk, and his behavior toward Kim demonstrates this as starkly as anything could. Never have we had a president so easily manipulated.