Foolish Trump Tweet-Begs North Korea To 'Honor Our Handshake'

By Frances Langum — July 10, 2018

Everyone with any experience with North Korea predicted this would happen. Trump got played by Kim Jong-un. Tired of winning yet, Donald?

Because Donald Trump thinks tweets can do things like lower oil prices and renegotiate trade deals, he tweet-begged Kim Jong-un to "honor the contract, and more importantly, the handshake" about nukes.

The handshake.

I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearization of North Korea. China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2018

Andrea Mitchell used the "we" word. It's not we, Andrea. Trump got played. From Monday's "The 11th Hour":

BRIAN WILLIAMS: The only way to start on North Korea is in simple English and that is, did we get played?

ANDREA MITCHELL: We sure did get played. And Pompeo with the best of intentions to try to flush out what in fact was agreed to in Singapore, if anything, he got snubbed. Sarah Sanders said he would be meeting with Kim Jong-un. He was not. That meeting was never in the cards. And, in fact, he spent two days going through endless long, multicourse dinners, lavish, which he didn't have an appetite for and they didn't get to the substance. They never got to the meat as to what really was agreed to in Singapore. And that's the problem. The president referring to a contract? What they signed were promises, empty promises, in fact. When he said in the tweet today that he relied more -- put more importance on the handshake with Kim Jong-un, why on earth would he be trusting a handshake from someone who is from a regime that has a history of family history of having cheated and lied to the United States and to other allies to their own neighbors in the past?

WILLIAMS: General, meantime this has become a standard line now in the president's rallies, talking about how much safer we are. That there are no longer missiles in the skies over the Pacific. Question to you is, are we any closer to denuclearization and remind me again what North Korea's motive is in agreeing to denuclearization.

GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY: You know, Andrea Mitchell pretty much summed it up. I have a great deal of empathy for Secretary Pompeo and jim Mattis, and the CIA director. They've got to remain objective. I've been dealing with the issue since I was a JCS strategic planner during the Clinton administration. The only difference between then and now is they have 60 nuclear weapons, maybe, and some ICBM capability to strike the United States.

They have no intention of denuclearizing.

So the Secretary of State has got to somehow maintain a dialogue lower the tension, keep our allies close to us. South Korea and Japan are concerned. Try to keep the Chinese supportive of the economic embargo and stop raising the nonsense expectations. You know, the president saying he's an honorable man revered by his people that, is not translating in North Korea. This guy is a monster. Murdered hundreds of his own thousands of his citizens. So we're in a very strange and concerning place right now.