What If Obama Had Met Kim?

I am just as skeptical as anyone on the chances that Kim Jong-un is really going to give up his nuclear weapons, make permanent peace with South Korea, and stop murdering his people. I am just as concerned about President Trump’s announcement that he is suspending joint exercises with the South Korean military, which are defensive in nature. Having seen how Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, played Bill Clinton and his hapless secretary of state, Madeleine Albright like a cheap fiddle, I have no wish to see it played out again with Trump. I also find Trump’s laudatory statements about Kim to be laughable.

Yet, the instant condemnation by the mainstream media, CNN in particular, is totally unfair. Even while Trump was landing in Singapore, CNN preferred to harp on the fiasco involving Trump’s bitter exchange with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the G-7 summit ended.

The sad fact is that our media so hates Trump that they can’t bring themselves to even wish for a Korean success on his part, which could conceivably end one of the world’s biggest threats to peace. As it is, Trump is the first sitting president to meet with a North Korean leader. And just today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, still in Asia, has announced that sanctions against North Korea will not ease until it denuclearizes.

Can you imagine if President Obama had met with Kim in Singapore and invited him to the White House? The media would be singing his praises. A second Nobel Peace Prize would shortly follow. But Trump, alas, is not Obama. Even if our wildest dreams came true as a result of the Trump-Kim meeting, there will be no Nobel Peace Prize for Trump; Kim possibly, but not Trump. The Nobel committee is just as politically biased as our media. (They gave a prize to none other than Yasir Arafat.)

Just yesterday, instead of dwelling on Singapore, other than to criticize it, Wolf Blitzer’s “Breaking News”on CNN was the report that Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, was changing his defense team leading to speculation that Cohen was preparing to cooperate with Robert Mueller and turn on Trump.

Maybe they should call it, “Breaking Speculation”.

Whatever happened to the concept that we all want our president, whoever he/she is, to succeed?  From CNN to MSNBC to the New York Times and on and on, the mainstream media can’t bear the thought that Trump just might succeed whether Clinton and Obama failed.

I continue to believe strongly in a free press, one that holds the president and government accountable. Yet, the press itself should not be above criticism.