"Kim Jong-un blinked and backed off some of his threats. So is it possible that some of the President’s amped up rhetoric worked?" That was John Berman today at CNN's Newsroom blurting out that perhaps President Donald Trump should get credit for North Korea backing down on its threat to hit Guam with a missile. Unfortunately for Berman, he broke an important taboo among the left that Trump should never be given credit for any positive achievements.
So how to explain that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un apparently blinked? Well, Vox has come up with a highly creative, if laughable, solution. The reason for the backdown according to Zach Beauchamp wasn't due to Trump's warnings. Instead it was because of the recent disturbances at Charlottesville, Virginia. I kid you not. Behold the buffonery:
While President Trump was engaged in an uncomfortable dance around condemning white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, North Korea quietly walked back a threat to launch missiles in the direction of American bases on Guam.
That’s no coincidence. Experts think this deescalation — what analyst Robert Carlin calls “a decisive break in the action” — happened in part because the President’s focus has been on Charlottesville since Friday night.
“The media (and the president) was distracted over the weekend, which gave some breathing space for the situation,” Jenny Town, the assistant director of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins, tells me.
Did Jenny also tell you that the ISIS retreat was due to a Confederate statue being pulled down in Durham, North Carolina?
That’s because Trump’s own statements — such as his vow to respond to threats from Pyongyang with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” — were partly to blame for the increased tensions between the two countries. But as soon as the Charlottesville story broke, Trump stopped talking about North Korea. And sure enough, things calmed down almost immediately.
Translation: The heightened tensions were Trump's fault but thank goddess Gaia that the Charlottesville story de-escalated the situation.
The rest of Beauchamp's screed is an overlong attempt to desperately convince the readers of the validity of the Charlottesville preventing possible North Korean apocalypse scenario. Here are some of the more laughable highlights:
When things really got scary, though, is when President Trump responded. During a public appearance on August 8, he warned that “North Korea had best not make any threats against the United States” or “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Trump's fault! Kim was merely a mostly harmless sideshow:
While threats like this are normal coming from Pyongyang, they are not how the United States usually talks to North Korea. Trump’s belligerent statement raised the risk of the conflict by sending a signal to the North that its fairly normal behavior could be met with an abnormal American response — potentially including military force.
Kim normal; Trump abnormal. Check!
... In a situation like this, reporters understandably ask the president how he’s thinking about the crisis. With a normal president, you’d get a normal response. But Trump is so instinctively blustery that he won’t back down from even his most irresponsible rhetoric. When asked whether his “fire and fury” statement was too tough, on August 10, he responded by amping up the heat.
Gee, I wonder if that was the reason Kim blinked? Naw! It had to be Charlottesville:
It was a dangerous cycle: North Korea, Trump, and breathless media coverage all egged each other on, creating a situation where each side believed the risk of war — though still low — was growing.
Let's not be shy. The blame all goes to Trump. That is what many Vox readers who can't fathom the idea of Trump's words causing North Korea to back down must fantasize:
Since the Charlottesville crisis began on Friday, Trump hasn’t made any new statements on North Korea. Nor did he tweet anything new; the only presidential tweets on the subject were retweets of positive press coverage about his administration’s policy — nothing that would indicate a new threat to North Korea.
So Charlottesville was Ground Zero of the non-apocalypse?
Finally, after spending many, many words promoting the Charlottesville premise, Beauchamp admits the crises would have de-escalated anyway:
This doesn’t mean that North Korea has put off its threat against Guam solely because Trump’s eye is focused elsewhere. It’s more than likely they would have done it anyway. It’s just that the president’s refocus on Charlottesville helped create a climate where it was easier for the North to deescalate without losing face.
Such as when Trump moved temporarily to New Jersey? Or when he was focusing on the Venezuela situation? Or on tax reform? Or...or... Any explanation will do except the all too obvious.
