Tag: Donald Trump

I think President Trump’s comments show how issues with South Korea are on the top of his mind:

President Donald Trump is apparently not a fan of ”Parasite,” his biggest complaint being that the movie was made in South Korea.

Trump started talking about the Academy Awards during a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Thursday. Parasite was named best picture, becoming the first non-English-language film to get the top honor.

”What the hell was that all about?” Trump said. ”We’ve got enough problems with South Korea with trade. On top of that, they give them best movie of the year. Was it good? I don’t know.”

Neon, the U.S. distributor for the subtitled film, shot back on Twitter. ”Understandable. He can’t read,” Neon tweeted.

The audience booed when Trump mentioned the Academy Awards and then cheered when he said: ”Can we get like ”Gone with the Wind’ back please? ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ so many great movies.”

Korea Times

Let me translate Trump for people that don’t understand him. It appears he has not even seen the movie; what he is complaining about is that he believes Hollywood should be making better American made movies instead of promoting foreign made movies during the Academy Awards. This is all consistent with Trump’s America first rhetoric he was been advocating for years on.

I am sure President Trump understands this, but if a deal is not made the North Koreans will very likely launch provocations next year to pressure the Trump administration into a deal:

 U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he doesn’t think North Korea will engage in hostile acts and interfere with the upcoming U.S. presidential election, an apparent warning that the communist nation shouldn’t undertake provocations that could hurt his reelection chances.

“I’d be surprised if North Korea acted hostilely,” Trump was quoted as telling reporters at the White House. “He knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that. But we’ll have to see.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is just another example of North Korea trying to create more tension prior to the end of the year in hopes of getting a deal with the Trump administration:

The lack of courtesy shown to Kim had “prompted the waves of hatred of our people against the U.S. and the Americans and they are getting higher and higher”, Choe said.

“It would be fortunate” if Trump’s remarks were simply “an instantaneous verbal lapse, but the matter becomes different if they were a planned provocation that deliberately targeted us”, she said. 

North Korea would watch closely to see if Trump repeated the comments, Choe said. 

“If any language and expressions stoking the atmosphere of confrontation are used once again on purpose at a crucial moment as now, that must really be diagnosed as the relapse of the dotage of a dotard,” she concluded. 

Trump said on Tuesday he still had confidence in the North Korean leader but noted that Kim “likes sending rockets up”. 

“…That’s why I call him Rocket Man,” Trump told reporters at a NATO meeting in London.

Reuters

The North Koreans have never been known for their sense of humor, but clearly the President was trying to be funny.

Like I said before, President Trump does not respond well to threats:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks about the possibility of using force against North Korea appears intended to warn against possible provocations ahead of the year-end deadline the regime set for Washington to show flexibility in their deadlocked nuclear talks, analysts said Wednesday.

Trump made the threat of military action on Tuesday, just hours after the North reiterated that the deadline is approaching and warned that it is entirely up to Washington what “Christmas gift” it wants to get.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has set the deadline for Washington to come up with an acceptable proposal to move forward the nuclear negotiations, warning that Pyongyang could otherwise take a “new way.”

“Now we have the most powerful military we’ve ever had and we’re by far the most powerful country in the world,” Trump told reporters during his trip to London to attend a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders.

“And, hopefully, we don’t have to use it, but if we do, we’ll use it. If we have to, we’ll do it,” he added.

Yonhap

You can read more at he link, but is everyone ready for an interesting 2020?

There is a new book out and of course to create traction in the media with it the author has to claim that President Trump is an idiot:

During that conversation, Wead wrote, Trump reiterated his belief that Obama would have gone to war with the North had he stayed in office.

“And I also think that thirty to one hundred million people could have been killed,” Wead quoted the president as saying.

South Korea has 51.2 million people and North Korea has a population of 25 million.

Trump then expressed disbelief at experts’ predictions that 100,000-200,000 people would die, a number he said was the equivalent of the population of a South Korean village.

“Well, as you know, Seoul, the capital city, is right by the so-called border,” he continued, according to Wead. “And that is a tough border by the way. An impenetrable border. And Seoul has a population of thirty million people. Kim has ten thousand guns, artillery, they call them cannons. He doesn’t even need a nuclear weapon to create one of the greatest calamities in history.”

The population of Seoul is just under 10 million.

Yonhap

When I read Trump’s comments I clearly understood that when he was talking about Seoul he was referencing the Seoul metropolitan area. The Seoul city center has 10 million, but the metro area has 25 million. Also when he is talking about upwards of 100 million casualties how do we know he wasn’t including if a nuclear weapon was dropped on Tokyo or other major cities? It is context like this that is important, but to get media attention he must be described as an idiot, so mission accomplished by this author.

The only real idiots are whoever told him a war on the Korean peninsula would only lead to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. If they did not use nukes I could maybe understand that number, but I find it hard to believe that if North Korea went all in and used nuclear weapons, that only that many people would die.

A quote I did find interesting that may explain why President Trump is pushing so hard on the Moon administration on USFK cost sharing is the status of the THAAD battery in South Korea:

“Do you know how much we spend defending South Korea? Four and half billion dollars a year. Figure that one out?” he added.

Trump has reportedly demanded that South Korea raise its contribution to shared defense costs to US$5 billion next year, a five-fold increase from this year.

Trump also complained to Wead that the people who treated the U.S. the worst were its allies.

“And you’ve heard the story with South Korea with the missiles system, with the THAAD anti-missile system?” he was quoted as saying.

I read that to mean that he is not happy about how the Moon administration is allowing the blockade of the road to the THAAD battery to occur. ROK Heads may remember that the road is still blocked and all supplies and personnel to the battery have to be flown in by helicopter. The battery though there to protect South Koreans is frequently used by Moon’s leftist allies to promote wild conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism.

Trump we have seen has a long memory when it comes to things he does not like and maybe the THAAD issue is something he is still unhappy about and influencing the cost sharing talks?

We all know that President Trump wants South Korea to pay more for the US-ROK alliance upkeep. This is nothing new, however this guy needs to sell a book which of course means coming up with a quote that make Trump look crazy. When are people going to learn not to take President Trump’s outbursts literally as he wanting $60 billion a year from South Korea. From the quote, I read it as he wants South Korea to pay much more for US-ROK alliance upkeep fees and just threw out a big number to make his point:

 U.S. President Donald Trump called South Korea a “major abuser” and claimed the U.S. ally should pay US$60 billion a year for the stationing of American troops in the country, according to a memoir published Tuesday.

Guy Snodgrass, former chief speechwriter and communications director to former U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, made the revelation in his new book, “Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis,” as he recounted two meetings between Trump and his national security team at the Pentagon in July 2017 and January 2018.

According to Snodgrass, Trump repeatedly questioned the value of stationing U.S. troops overseas and asked top officials, including then-Defense Secretary Mattis and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whether the troops could be withdrawn from countries such as South Korea, Japan and Germany.

“It’s a losing deal!” Trump was quoted as saying in January 2018. “If (South Korea) paid us $60 billion a year to keep our troops overseas, then it’s an okay deal.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest reading of the tea leaves in regards to North Korea denuclearization talks:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said there would be a “major rebuild” of North Korea at some point, and he referred to some “very interesting information” he recently obtained in regard to the country.

It was unclear whether the remark, delivered near the end of a cabinet meeting, alluded to some progress in Washington’s stalled denuclearization negotiations with Pyongyang or whether it could be another of Trump’s idiosyncratic ideas of striking an ultimate deal with the regime.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but apparently an offer the Trump administration made at the last talks was to help North Korea complete their massive tourism project between Wonsan and Kalma on the country’s east coast. The project has been delayed by the sanctions. If anyone knows how to complete a resort project it would be Trump. I guess we will see what happens in the coming months on this offer.

It appears that the ROK strategy for not paying more for USFK cost sharing is to imply that they may reduce their purchase of U.S. weapons if they pay more:

President Moon Jae-in outlined to U.S. President Donald Trump Korea’s plans to purchase many American weapons over the next three years as they held a summit in New York on Monday.

A Blue House official told reporters that Moon during the talks briefed Trump on Seoul’s weapons purchases over the past decade and “also plans for our purchases for the next three years.”

Moon is expected to have explained to Trump Seoul’s purchase of American weapons systems between 2009 and 2018. This is likely to have included the acquisition of 40 F-35A Lockheed Martin stealth fighters and three American-made Aegis combat systems, worth some $6.279 billion, according to data by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

During the 10-year time frame, Korea ranked as the fourth-largest U.S. weapons importer, following Saudi Arabia, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, according to Sipri data.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I don’t think anyone doubts North Korea’s economic potential, the real question is if their economic potential can be reached and the Kim regime still remains in power:

U.S. President Donald Trump again touted North Korea’s “tremendous” economic potential on Monday, seemingly urging the regime to return to denuclearization talks.

The negotiations have yet to resume despite Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s agreement to do so within several weeks after their impromptu meeting on the inter-Korean border on June 30.

“I think that North Korea has tremendous economic potential, and I think that Kim Jong-un sees that,” Trump said at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the conclusion of a Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.