Trump and Kim in Singapore: The Art of the Steal

Donald Trump, our malignant narcissist-in-chief, is gushing about his bromance with Kim Jong Un, one of the world’s foremost violators of human rights, after their splashy reality TV summit in Singapore.

This won’t end well.

For Trump, their meeting has temporarily satisfied his boundless appetite for attention. But other than a luxurious bath in the global media spotlight, Trump didn’t gain very much from their encounter. When it comes to matters of substance, Kim Jong Un picked his pocket.

It’s The Art of the Steal.

Kim made the same flimsy denuclearization promises that his predecessors first articulated in 1992. There’s nothing in the agreement to explain how Kim’s will be fulfilled. It promised none of the inspection guarantees that President Obama negotiated in the Iran deal, which Trump savaged, over and over again, in his trademark hyperbolic fashion, as weak.

Trump, meanwhile, pledged to stop joint military exercises with South Korea and said he would like to withdraw U.S. troops from that country.

If Obama had made such an offer, Trump and his supporters would be issuing apoplectic demands for investigation and impeachment.

Intoxicated by ego, Trump imagines that his fellow authoritarian will eventually capitulate to his  demands for unilateral disarmament. But anyone who thinks Kim Jong Un will ultimately give up his nuclear weapons is as delusional as Donald Trump.

And when Kim refuses, as he inevitably will, there will be hell to pay, for a spurned narcissist with the nuclear codes at his fingertips is a very dangerous thing.

With the encouragement of bloodthirsty hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham and National Security Advisor John Bolton, Trump has been persuaded that unleashing war on the Korean peninsula is a viable option. Graham, in fact, said just this weekend that the only alternative to total North Korean denuclearization is war.

I don’t doubt for a second that, once spurned, Trump will unleash one. From his  warped perspective, war will seem like a blissful combination of revenge against “Little Rocket Man,” and a welcome distraction from from Robert Mueller.