Day 750: Trump set to get played by North Korea again

Donald Trump made it official Friday night: following a disastrous summit eight months ago, he’s ready for Round 2 with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

Where Trump is getting the “economic powerhouse” phrase— a line that is as cheesy as it is transparent — is especially confounding. North Korea has one of the world’s smallest GDPs per capita and only trades with a handful of countries. (China accounts for over 90 percent of both their exports and imports.) They’re missing the infrastructure to be any sort of player on the world stage, and just because Trump is being bamboozled into a second meeting, doesn’t mean the world is suddenly going to become trading partners with them.

Despite the blusters, Trump doesn’t know Kim at all. They have met for a few hours and exchanged a few letters, the latter of which Trump has embarrassingly gushed over to the media. Trump’s idea of diplomacy was trying to send Kim an Elton John CD.

To say he’s being outplayed by a 35-year old dictator is an understatement.

After the first meeting, North Korea got a bunch of great propaganda clips — including Trump saluting a North Korean general — while Trump claimed that the Kim agreed to denuclearize (he didn’t and he hasn’t). In fact, the U.S. got basically nothing from the first meeting as the intelligence community remains wary of Kim and his nuclear ambitions.

Trump’s mood toward North Korea has vacillated wildly over the past two years. First he mocked Kim as “little rocket man” only to later claim that the two “fell in love” during their meeting.

If the Hanoi meeting is anything like the Singapore one, the North Koreans will emerge with more credibility on the national stage as Trump kisses the feet of a ruthless, nuclear-focused dictator.

750 days in, 712 to go

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