Literary Corner: Enough to Make a Cat Laugh

Via The Niall Boylan Show, late night Irish talk radio.

But Not Me

by Donald J. Trump

North Korea
fired off some
small weapons, which
disturbed some of my people,
and others, but not me.

I have confidence
that Chairman Kim
will keep his promise to me,

& also smiled when he called
Swampman Joe Bidan a low
IQ individual, & worse.

Perhaps that’s sending
me a signal?

No, I think the missile tests were the signal to you. He's reminding you how much fun you could have breaking UNSC resolutions together. BTW what did he promise you? A resort property on Sea of Japan coast? You got robbed, summer's only two months long and it rains constantly.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) May 26, 2019

At first I thought Kim Jong-un must be John Barron, his diction so Trumpian, but that's just Donald's paraphrase of what he actually said, or rather what the Korean Central News Agency said, and what it said seems at first like a signal to Biden (whose name Kim's people spelled correctly), that Biden was "a fool of low IQ" and "bereft of elementary quality as a human being".

But in fact it looks as if it was directed to Trump in a manner of speaking, since the sense of the thing is to defend Trump against Biden's attack:

Biden during a campaign launch in Philadelphia on Saturday accused President Donald Trump of cozying up to “dictators and tyrants” like Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “What he uttered is just sophism of an imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being, let alone a politician,” KCNA said.

“It is by no means accidental that here is nonstop comment over his bid for candidacy that he is not worth pinning hope on, backed by the jeer that he is a fool of low IQ,” KCNA said.

It mocked Biden’s belief that he was “the most popular presidential candidate.” ‘’This is enough to make a cat laugh,” the report said.

Kim has definitely broken at least one promise to Trump, with the short-range missile tests of early May, in spite of Trump's confidence that he wouldn't, even after the smash ending of the Vietnam summit:

“One of the things, importantly, that Chairman Kim promised me last night is, regardless, he’s not going to do testing of rockets and nuclear,” Trump said during a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. “Not going to do testing. So I trust him, and I take him at his word. I hope that’s true.”

And it's far from  clear what sort of signal them tests were meant to be, but it sounds like a threat to keep breaking the promise if the negotiating impasse persists:

“Pyongyang is saying plainly that without progress in the talks, tests are likely to resume in full,” said Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. “While it’s clear that this is meant to send a more restrained signal than a return to tests of longer range missiles that Kim Jong-un voluntarily paused, what’s not clear is whether the president will draw that distinction.”

It goes without saying that the president did not draw that distinction, but while national security adviser John Bolton is disturbed, Trump has been very cheerful about it:

Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it. He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2019

He has confidence even as Kim explicitly broke this promise, as he said in the little poem—he's a regular confidence man!—and confidence that Kim smiled when he, or the KCNA, spoke of Biden, and the signal of the smile (as Trump imagined it, since he didn't actually see it) is the best signal of all.