Category: Politics-US

Korean-American To Try Again to Win Congressional Seat in California

| October 7, 2019

It will be interesting to see how this race turns out next year after narrowing losing in 2018:

When newly elected members of Congress traveled to Washington for freshman orientation in late November, Young Kim, 56, flew from her Orange County home to join them. Not all of the ballots in California’s 39th Congressional District were counted, but Ms. Kim believed her narrow lead was solid. After shaking hands with other members at white-tablecloth lunches, she posed for her official portrait and a group photo of all new members. Ms. Kim was expected to be one of two Republican women of color and the first Korean-American woman in Congress.

Several days into her rookie duties in late November, with all of the 244,393 ballots in the district counted, the race was officially called: She lost the election. Gil Cisneros, her Democratic opponent and a former Republican who ran on preserving Obamacare, captured 51.6 percent of the vote. Ms. Kim would not be a member of the 116th Congress.

Less than six months later, Ms. Kim announced she would try again. Now, the rematch between Ms. Kim and Mr. Cisneros will test how blue the 2018 wave in Orange County really was. Republicans hope that after the narrow loss, they can reclaim the district and two others in the county, which encompasses the birthplace of Richard Nixon and has long been a bastion for conservatives.

“This district is not as far left as many political pundits in Washington would like people to believe,” Ms. Kim said in an interview. Soon after the loss, Ms. Kim began discussing the possibility of running again with her husband, who is also active in local politics, and their four adult children. It was almost a given that she would try again. “Winners don’t quit,” she said. “That’s why I got back in — we know we can.”

New York Times

You can read more at the link.

Democrats Criticize President Trump Over Meeting with Kim Jong-un

| July 3, 2019

This news should not be a surprise to anyone:

Democratic lawmakers in the United States, including some running for the White House, say there’s little in President Donald Trump’s diplomatic track to convince them that his meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (gihm jung oon) may lead to a nuclear breakthrough.

Trump is coming under criticism for what Democrats see as his affinity for authoritarian leaders such as Kim and they are skeptical that the Trump-Kim sit-down at the Demilitarized Zone may amount to anything more than a photo opportunity.

Sen. Chuck Schumer says “dictators seem to get elevated and people who believe in democracy not.”

Former Obama Housing Secretary Julian Castro, a presidential candidate, wonders why Trump appears keen to raise Kim’s profile when, according to Castro, Kim hasn’t abided by past commitments about the North’s weapons programs.

And Sen. Bernie Sanders, also a 2020 candidate, says he’s not opposed to sitting down with America’s adversaries, but he tells ABC’s “This Week” that “we need real diplomacy” and he hasn’t seen that under Trump

Associated Press

This is coming from the people who supported President Obama when he flew to Cuba with his whole family to hang out with the dictators there. I doubt President Trump’s engagement with North Korea is going to get them to denuclearize, but the claims from his critics sound more like “since Trump is for it, I must be against it” instead of any reasoned policy position.

Politicians Unhappy President Trump Accepted Kim Jong-un’s Answer About Not Knowing What Happened to Otto Warmbier

| March 1, 2019

The Warmbier case is clearly taking a backseat to the larger US goal of trying to get North Korea to denuclearize:

Donald Trump took Kim Jong Un’s word that he knew nothing of the torture of an American college student while in North Korean custody, an about-face that sparked a bipartisan backlash back home on Thursday.
The US president appeared to side with the reclusive leader about the 2017 case of Otto Warmbier, drawing outrage from incredulous Democrats who accused Trump of repeatedly aligning with tyrants.
The 22-year-old Ohio native was returned to the United States in a coma and died shortly afterwards. A US judge concluded Warmbier was tortured by North Korean authorities.
At the conclusion of his Hanoi summit with Kim, Trump told reporters he talked with Kim about the “horrible” Warmbier case.
“He knew the case very well, but he knew it later,” Trump said, adding that “some really bad things” happened to Warmbier while he was detained.
Kim “tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”

AFP

You can read all the so called outrage from the usual suspects at the link.

Former Deputy FBI Director Claims that President Trump Did Not Believe North Korea Launched an ICBM

| February 17, 2019

Who knows how accurate this comment is, but it is of course making the rounds as a headline:

Inevitably, the book includes disturbing new detail about Trump’s subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin. During an Oval Office briefing in July 2017, Trump refused to believe U.S. intelligence reports that North Korea had test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile — a test that Kim Jong Un had called a Fourth of July “gift” to “the arrogant Americans.”
Trump dismissed the missile launch as a “hoax,” McCabe writes. “He thought that North Korea did not have the capability to launch such missiles. He said he knew this because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”

Washington Post

You can read more at the link.