So we’re finally here. The Tuesday (Singapore time) summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was something the liberal media were doubtful would ever happen, but here we are.
When the two leaders were just a couple of hours from meeting each other, the liberal media were grasping at straws to find some way to attack and discredit the summit. On Monday’s (U.S. time) edition of CNN’s OutFront, host Erin Burnett was so desperate to find something to complain and fear monger about she actually suggested Trump was too jetlagged to be effective. It was something her panel pounced on to sew concern about the President’s ability to strike a deal.
When Burnett started her program, her greatest concern was that Trump and Kim would first meet one-on-one with no one else there but their translators. “And we do understand it will be one-on-one. Just the two men and their translators. Now, President Trump seems to have slept little if at all, that's the issue with Asian jet-lag,” she fretted as she noted he was up early tweeting criticism of his “hatters.”
It was a historic moment for the world where anything could happen (including the possibility of an outline for further peace talks), but Burnett huffed about how all she saw was two men running a “reality show”:
He's making it clear he believes this is all about him, his personal power and ability, mano-a-mano with Kim, and that's what it is about. Two larger than life showmen have turned a summit about life and death into a sort of reality show in Singapore. You know, listen to the cheers for Kim when he went out on the town in Singapore.
Seizing on his host’s doubts about Trump’s mental state ahead of the meeting, former CIA operative Robert Baer also harped on Trump being too tired and too dumb to know what’s going on. “That's a bad idea. You've already mentioned the jet-lag, the issues are too complicated for him. He's said in so many words he's not really up on the issues,” he chided.
“But at the end of the day, I don't see what you could get out of a one-on-one meeting like that and will he even remember what was said at that point? And will he cover the main points? I tell you, I couldn't,” he continued. So, Baer argued that Trump was too dumb to remember what happened in the meeting because he was too?
Sticking up for Obama’s decrepit legacy of nuclear agreements, Burnett declared that Trump had a major “problem” in that “the Iran deal is the standard” and suggested Trump couldn’t possibly get that much in an agreement. “He's gotta have more verification than was in there. He’s got to have -- and that's pretty hard to do,” she claimed.
“You're absolutely right. In a logical world, that's a problem. But not in this world,” opined a bitter Joel Wit, a Clinton-era official who negotiated with North Korea for that administration. “And so, I think what Trump will do is take ownership of this problem and he'll say, ‘this is enough.’ And then the Iran deal, well, he didn't make that deal. So it was a bad deal. He makes this deal, it's a good deal.”
Judging by this frantic attempt at trying to cast the summit in a negative light from every angle, it’s almost like they didn’t want the summit to be successful.
This is CNN.
The relevant portions of the transcript are below, click "expand" to read more:
CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront
June 11, 2018
7:01:12 PM Eastern(…)
ERIN BURNETT: He and President Trump are expected to leave their respective hotels for the summit within moments. 12 hours' difference. So it's Tuesday morning in Singapore, and they are heading to Sentosa Island just off the coast there. These are live pictures of the island, that's where the summit is going to be held. Once there, they'll head to the Capella hotel. They'll then walk outside there to have an official greeting for the cameras, a historic handshake.
And that will be the beginning of the first one-on-one meeting between a sitting U.S. President and the leader of North Korea. And we do understand it will be one-on-one. Just the two men and their translators.
Now, President Trump seems to have slept little if at all, that's the issue with Asian jet-lag. But he started tweeting just after 5:00 am local time this morning. His most recent tweets slamming critics of the meeting, calling them, quote, “haters and losers.” And then this one, maybe the tweet that ultimately matters the most, the President saying, quote, “meetings between staffs and representatives are going well and quickly, but in the end, that doesn't matter. We'll all know soon whether or not a real deal, unlike those of the past, can happen.”
He's making it clear he believes this is all about him, his personal power and ability, mano-a-mano with Kim, and that's what it is about. Two larger than life showmen have turned a summit about life and death into a sort of reality show in Singapore. You know, listen to the cheers for Kim when he went out on the town in Singapore.
(…)
BURNETT: Bob, a senior Trump administration official is telling us they're going to go in front of the cameras for this first very formal handshake, and then there's this one-on-one, and we really do understand it to be one-on-one, Trump, Kim, translators, that's it. No aides, no other secondary tertiary sources on what actually happens in the room. Your take?
ROBERT BAER: That's a bad idea. You've already mentioned the jet-lag, the issues are too complicated for him. He's said in so many words he's not really up on the issues. In the sense, it starts a process and it's better than threatening each other. So that's the good part of it. But at the end of the day, I don't see what you could get out of a one-on-one meeting like that and will he even remember what was said at that point? And will he cover the main points? I tell you, I couldn't.
(…)
BURNETT: And yet, Jean, when you see what's happened here, the North Korean envoy coming to Washington, D.C., an unprecedented move, something the Iranians were never granted when they were working on the deal with President Obama. You have this meeting itself, the cheers, the selfie. Kim Jong-un is sort of a -- I don't know what the right word is, but certainly approachable figure. You say he's already won hugely.
JEAN LEE: He has. We've given him this platform to make his international debut. He's done very little in return. He will come into this saying, “look, I blew up our nuclear test site,” and Joel can talk a bit more about that. He'll say, “I released the American hostages.” We may see another symbolic gesture, perhaps the return of the USS Pueblo, which is a warship that was captured 50 years ago this year. But we haven't had anything concrete. We've given him this platform to show himself as a world leader and a nuclear power. It's a bit unsettling for me to be honest because he's not changed. He's still the same person and we are just giving him this platform.
(…)
BURNETT: Doesn't Trump have a problem, though? Because, I mean, the Iran deal is the standard right? He's gotta have more verification than was in there. He’s got to have -- and that's pretty hard to do.
JOEL WIT: You're absolutely right. In a logical world, that's a problem. But not in this world. And so, I think what Trump will do is take ownership of this problem and he'll say, “this is enough.” And then the Iran deal, well, he didn't make that deal. So it was a bad deal. He makes this deal, it's a good deal.
BURNETT: So it's about personality.
(…)
