While in Hanoi with the world’s press gathered after the US-North Korea talks abruptly ended, Trump was asked about whether he spoke with Kim Jong Un about American Otto Warmbier who had been held for months by North Korea and was brutally tortured until he was comatose, then hurriedly released to the U.S. so he could die hours later at home.
Trump answered the reporter’s question by saying Kim “tells me he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”
Trump could have made a statesman-like appeal to Kim and ask him to launch an investigation to find out who ordered and carried out Warmbier's torture - because who would have the nerve to do something that besmirched and sullied Kim's reputation and make him look like a blood-thirsty monster to the world rather than a great leader? Trump would have finally looked presidential with that one request. But Trump just doesn't have it in him.
Once he was safely back home where he thinks he can massage whatever message comes out and do his own damage control he reinvents the moment and claims it was a misunderstanding, tweeting “I never like being misinterpreted, but especially when it comes to Otto Warmbier and his great family. Remember, I got Otto out along with three others. The previous Administration did nothing, and he was taken on their watch. Of course I hold North Korea responsible…”
Trump didn't “get Otto out.” That's just Trump hyperbole. Only days before Warmbier died, panicky North Koreans contacted the U.S. and demanded they take the dying man off their hands. Trump didn't lift a finger. Trump also played the “blame Obama” card in his tweet - as though passing the buck to cover his own shortcomings in defending Kim's implication in murder is a rational and adult way to explain why Trump is not to blame, for anything. Trump ends the tweet almost in a whisper “Of course I hold North Korea responsible…”
Of course you do.
Yet when Trump had the opportunity to say that on the world stage he crumbled. He showed everyone his true colors; he defended the regime that killed Warmbier, and he actually used the world stage to praise that regime. What does that say about the United States with Donald Trump as our president?
Worldwide approval of U.S. leadership has already floundered and remains low after a dramatic drop during Trump's first year in office, while China's rating ticked up to its highest in almost a decade. That’s according to a new Gallup poll released Thursday, February 28th that measures how adults in 133 countries feel about the global leadership of countries like the U.S., China, Germany, and Russia. The low approval rating for the U.S. "suggests that the doubts sowed in Trump's first year about U.S. commitments abroad have taken root," it reads. "Russia is now on a more even level with the U.S." Trump is the reason we are at this new low point.
Trump has repeatedly embarrassed the U.S. on the world stage.
He shut down the U.S. government over Mexico not paying for his border wall. When that didn't work, he declared a National Emergency when there was no emergency at all, even according to his own military commanders. It was such a serious situation that, after declaring it, Trump spent the next three days playing golf at Mar-a-Lago.
In Helsinki he validated Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election…interference that got Trump into office. Trump used the same opportunity to defend Putin, taking his word over the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus. All the while Putin stood next to him and proudly boasted "Yes I did, yes I did" want Trump to win.
Trump validated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ordering the execution of U.S. legal resident Jamal Khashoggi. What is one death when measured against the billions U.S. defense contractors, and real estate moguls like Trump, make off the Saudi government?
He defended as "fine people" racists, White Supremacists, and the KKK at the Charlottesville Virginia march even after a White Nationalist had killed a protester and injured 19 others.
He referred to African nations as “shithole” countries, just as he did with Haiti and El Salvador. Even after being told the correct pronunciation, he still repeatedly mispronounces Namibia as ‘Nambia’, Tanzania as 'Tan-Zay-nee-uh, Bhutan as “Button,” and Nepal as “Nipple.” He doesn’t understand that Colombia and Columbia are not the same things.
Trump was actually laughed at by the entire world…literally, on September 25, 2018, when he bragged about phony accomplishments before the U.N. General Assembly.
His administration still uses the terrorist tactic of ripping children away from parents who’ve crossed the border into the U.S. attempting to flee terror in their own country. Several of those kids have now died as a result of maltreatment while being held in U.S. government facilities. The Trump administration doesn’t care.
That is because Trump doesn’t care...about America or anything else. Trump only cares about Trump. The entire Trump presidency is one long get-rich-quick scheme.
We will pay for Trump’s enriching himself at our expense far into the future unless we use our Constitutional right to demand enactment of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office and indict him as soon as he steps outside the White House. He should face the consequences for his lifetime of unethical behavior, criminal activities, and treasonous actions taken as president.
For his massive corruption, dishonesty, deceit, fraud, sexual assaults, money laundering, numerous Emoluments violations just to name a few, Trump should become the first U.S. president to die in prison.
It will be cheaper for us.
