MSNBC’s live coverage of the Singapore summit between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un amounted to little more than an airing of grievances about the President. Right out of the gate, commentators commenced hurling scornful remarks about Trump’s supposed incompetence and apathy, until All In host Chris Hayes eventually asserted Donald Trump was not “burdened by caring” about the outcome of the summit.
Hayes made this remark in the midst of a conversation about the President’s relationship with various Asian heads of state. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof offered his theory that South Korean President Moon Jae-in had manipulated Trump into pursuing the summit with promises of a shiny reward at the end of it – in this case, a Nobel Peace Prize.
Unconvinced, MSNBC host Brian Williams countered, “That assumes our President is manipulatable [sic] somehow.”
“I sometimes can’t tell if his super power is that everyone thinks that they’re not going to be the mark and he is the mark,” Hayes confided. The All In host continued:
He does have a – What he is able to do is not care enough to get through every successive interaction. And other people are burdened by caring. Shinzo Abe. Other people are burdened by a set of conceptions of their fidelity or duties to the state they represent. He is kind of unburdened by that.
In short, Hayes believed that the President was apathetic about the ultimate fate of either country involved in the meeting, and that this gave him the upper hand at the negotiating table. “I don’t think anyone thinks Donald Trump cares in some deep way, just as a person, about the substance of the matter,” he continued. “He cares about the headlines and everyone knows that who’s on the other side of the table from him.
Hayes’s fellow panelists agreed, and Kristof rejoined to continue his dry diatribe.
