While Donald Trump has been embarrassing the United States with our allies, his completely inexperienced Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson has been in Asia, war mongering against North Korea. He has also cherry picked reporters allowed access. At his visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone yesterday, he barred all press except Fox News.
CNN explains (with my emphases added):
The Trump administration has given preferential access to favorable outlets while excluding others -- a move critics say is dangerously reminiscent of state-controlled media.
In the latest incident, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson invited Fox News to cover his meeting at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, on the North-South Korea border, but denied access to the press pool that provides all media outlets with an account of the secretary's activities.
"Fox unilateral network team was allowed into this meeting -- pool asked for access and was blocked," wrote CNN's Pamela Boykoff, the author of Friday's pool report. "Local embassy official told the pool it was 'the Secretary's decision.'"
This latest restriction came after Tillerson barred all press from traveling with him except for one reporter, Erin McPike, of the right-wing Independent Journal Review. Politico described IJR as having “made its name with lighthearted videos featuring politicians and viral stories.” Politico also noted that McPike has no experience covering the State Department and would not be acting as a pool reporter, “meaning she won’t be sharing information about the trip with other reporters, which is what would normally happen if there were limited space for reporters and only a few were chosen.”
McPike is, by coincidence, a frequent guest on Fox News.
Tillerson’s visit to Asia is hardly a goodwill-tour photo-op. The New York Times reported yesterday:
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson ruled out on Friday opening any negotiation with North Korea to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and said for the first time that the Trump administration might be forced to take pre-emptive action “if they elevate the threat of their weapons program” to an unacceptable level.
So while Donald Trump offends our allies with his childish, amateurish behavior, Putin-pal Tillerson, another heretofore amateur, is deliberately antagonizing nuclear-armed North Korea.
And stifling Americans' access to what he's up to.
Watch Tillerson's March 17, 2017 war mongering below, via the New York Times.
But this one is utterly amoral, willing to lie, cheat and enrich himself at any cost. Fortunately, he is so far over the top, in so many ways, his days are clearly numbered – the rats are already manning the lifeboats. Let’s just hope he can be disposed of quickly and before he can do irrevocable damage.
The update I heard late last week was Tillerson was forced to back off his big stick vomit due to blowback from China, South Korea, and Japan.
Can’t help hoping that they will continue to cut their own throats with stunts like surrounding themselves with sycophants. Refusal to use the “press pool” mechanism doesn’t look very good. Almost like something a dictator would do. Hmmmmmm.
With North Korea we have always done a little theatre with the nuts north of the DMZ. Bill Clinton rightly figured out how to deal with them. North Korea acts up, we chastise them and then we wind up giving them food for their starving population. It works, it keeps the peace and the N. Koreans don’t starve to death. W thought he was gonna reinvent the wheel but wound up going right back to the system Clinton developed. For this Korean charade, Trump may actually be well suited for this. A little back and forth pretend. Right up Trump’s alley. As long as he’s not like Bush and think he knows better.
As bad as Trump is, George W. Bush is still the worst president ever.
