Tucker Carlson thinks Donald Trump’s swooning over North Korea’s murderous dictator Kim Jong-un is just fine because hey, what national leader doesn’t have to kill his citizens?
Never mind that American Otto Warmbier was imprisoned and returned in a vegetative state from North Korea (though contrary to popular perception, Warmbier was probably not tortured or beaten there). What’s an American death compared to the glory of Dear Leader walking into North Korea and getting nothing other than a chance to preen before the cameras while giving Kim even more of the legitimacy and stature he craves?
To Carlson, who accompanied Trump to the meeting with Kim, Trump’s desperate photo op was a demonstration of Trump’s awesome physical superiority. Fox News’ write up of Carlson’s comments on Fox & Friends Sunday morning was hilariously titled, "Tucker Carlson says Trump 'dominated' Kim as 'wheezing' North Korean dictator struggled."
"And, [Kim] was breathing like an emphysema patient. I'm not saying that to be insulting but he was breathing in a labored way like he was out of breath. And even allowing for the historic nature of it, which I'm sure played a role in his breathlessness, but my take as a non-physician was -- this is a very unhealthy guy. Very unhealthy. I mean, maybe I'm wrong... but that was the first thing I thought. This guy is in very bad health."
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"My sense ... just standing there for an hour watching -- I think he was probably a little bit overwhelmed by Trump who towers over him and who is a very large man," Carlson added. "He seemed to kind of dominate him and there was a kind of magnetism and real aggression to Trump, so it didn't feel exactly like peers. It felt like maybe an older brother-younger brother kind of situation."
Right... an attention-craving older brother, who happens to represent the world’s most powerful democracy, slobbering over a murderous dictator. What’s not to love about this situation?
Oh, sure, Carlson acknowledged that Kim is probably not the best bromance material. But as Fox News put it, Carlson also “offered the realist flip-side of the coin.”
“There’s no defending the North Korean regime, which is a monstrous regime. It’s the last really Stalinist regime in the world. It’s a disgusting place, obviously, and so there’s no defending it," he said.
“On the other hand, you’ve got to be honest about what it means to lead a country, it means killing people. Not on the scale that the North Koreans do, but a lot of countries commit atrocities including a number that we’re closely allied with.”
“I’m not a relativist or anything, but it’s important to be honest about that,” Carlson added.
Carlson’s interview with Trump will air tonight at 8 PM ET. I’m sure it will be full of hard-hitting questions – not!
Meanwhile, listen to Carlson shrug off Trump palling around with a tinpot dictator below, during his telephone conversation with Fox & Friends on June 30, 2019.
(Carlson image via screen grab)
I realize there are many people who would like to see warmer relations with North Korea, and I’m one of them. The bizarre threats we were hearing two years ago from Pence’s spokesman about North Korea were petty and alarming. Now he’s gone 180 degrees and is slavishly elevating Kim. There is another way to have handled this – which would involve actual diplomats and people with some brains actually thinking for a minute before taking the odd actions we’ve seen from Trump here. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone like that involved in our current diplomacy. Such an advance will need to wait until we have an actual President elected – hopefully next November. Until then, we’re stuck with the continuing mess of the incompetent, bumbling Pence White House.
Regarding Otto Warmbier, he was neither a martyr for freedom nor a tragic victim of the North Korean state. The linked article makes Warmbier’s situation pretty clear. Warmbier was a college student who made a truly unfortunate mistake when he tried to steal a propaganda poster from a restricted area in the hotel where he was briefly staying when he was a tourist in North Korea around NYE at the end of 2015. He was of course caught, and the North Koreans assumed he had been put up to this behavior to attack them. When he tried to explain his membership in a fraternity (the real reason he’d tried to steal a trophy – he would have been the king of the frat if he’d succeeded), they assumed this meant he was involved in a conspiracy with a “secret organization”.
It’s clear that Warmbier was terrified for his life by the ordeal of questioning and intimidation he endured after being caught breaking North Korean laws. When the show trial ended with him being sentenced to hard labor for longer than he’d been alive, he clearly was a broken man. The article notes that he never made it to the labor camp. Instead, he suffered a massive loss of oxygen to his brain on the night before he was to be transferred. Coincidentally, he apparently had been given an extra supply of sleeping pills as he was unable to rest without them due to all the stress. It doesn’t take an expert to figure out what Warmbier did when faced with what he thought was a life sentence of brutal punishment and no hope. This doesn’t excuse the North Koreans, but it makes the situation a lot more understandable.