Trump's Critics, Fake News

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Trump's Critics

 
As I suggested in this morning's special report, Trump's critics on the left and among the #NeverTrump movement will never be satisfied.  They accuse him of being a maniac who will get us into war or of being Neville Chamberlain rushing into a bad deal. 
 
MSNBC's commentators wasted airtime analyzing the "competitive touching" between Trump and Kim. 
 
Plumbing the depths of Trump Derangement Syndrome, actor Alec Baldwin suggested the summit was just a ruse to give the president cover to fire Robert Mueller.
 
Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) are pushing a resolution that would prevent the president from launching a pre-emptive strike on North Korea.  But tying the president's hands only strengthens Kim Jong Un.
 
House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi trashed the Singapore summit.  In a statement, she said, "In his haste to reach an agreement, President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime's status quo." 
 
Pelosi went on to blast the president for his "marginalization of the vast expertise of the State Department," and suggested that Trump is "hindering a lasting, stable pathway to peace." 
 
Sorry, Nancy, but the "vast expertise of the State Department" did very little to solve this problem over the past 20 years.
 
Pelosi's criticism about elevating Kim is being echoed by top Obama officials and many left-wing media outlets.  The senior editor of The Atlantic labeled the summit "Kim Jong Un's Propaganda Victory," adding that it "seemed to normalize Kim on the world stage." 
 
Well, what's the alternative?  Is the left now arguing for war or regime change?
 
This is coming from the same left-wing media that praised Barack Obama in 2008 for promising to meet with Iran and North Korea "without preconditions." 
 
While Obama ignored North Korea, he did negotiate with Iran -- even as it was repeatedly threatening a second Holocaust by annihilating the state of Israel. 
 
 
 
Fake News
 
NBC News reported yesterday that President Trump would not engage Kim on the issue of human rights.  Some left-wing commentators have also criticized the president for ignoring the issue.  That is fake news. 
 
And remind me again, exactly what did Barack Obama, Mr. Nobel Prize Winner, do for human rights in Iran or Cuba? 
 
I know many people reading this report care deeply about human rights and Christian persecution overseas, including in North Korea.  I do too, and that will be a big part of my work on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
 
So I am pleased to report that Trump did raise the issue of human rights during his meeting with Kim. 
 
The purpose of this summit, first and foremost, was to see if North Korea was serious about eliminating its nuclear weapons program.  That said, Donald Trump did not sell out political prisoners and Christians languishing in North Korean gulags, as some on the left have suggested.
 
At his press conference following the summit, one reporter asked the president whether he had betrayed the 100,000 political prisoners in North Korea. 
 
"I think I've helped them," Trump answered.  "Not much I can do right now.  At a certain point. . . I think they are one of the great winners today."