Fareed Zakaria is, according to CNN, a foreign policy "expert". Okay, I know it is CNN, but they still promote him as an expert and publicize his views. Just in the last day, we learned what this fool -- excuse me, "expert" -- thinks about the planned meeting between President Trump and the North Korean dictator. Zakaria thinks it is a bad move by the USA. It supposedly gives Kim Jong Un something that he has wanted for years, a meeting with the president of the USA as an equal. Zakaria says that American presidents have always refused to meet with the North Korean leader, but President Trump has changed that. Here's the essence of what Zakaria has to say:
"So what changed this week? It's not clear. The charitable interpretation would be that the South Korean government received assurances that the North was serious about talks to eliminate its arsenal. Let's be clear that North Korea has announced no concessions, no reversal of its arsenal, no denuclearization."
That's Zakaria's "expert" view; now let's consider the actual facts. North Korea has suspended it's nuclear testing. North Korea has suspended its missile testing. North Korea has agreed to stop complaints about joint US - South Korea military exercises. Each of these three are a major concession. Indeed, the first two of these concessions are the very ones that President Trump made conditions that North Korea had to satisfy before there could be talks of any sort. That's another way of say that Zakaria is totally wrong when he says that the NK's announced no concessions.
Now it is true that the North Koreans did not announce that they would denuclearize. That's the subject for discussion in the talks. What Zakaria is claiming ought to have happened is the equivalent of a union negotiation with management in which the management agrees to speak to the union representatives only after they first concede that the union will accept whatever the management offers. That's not how talks are supposed to work.
The truth is that President Trump got major concessions from the North Koreans. Zakaria on CNN cannot concede that success by Trump, sohe resorts to misstating the facts. Most people would just call it lying, but that might offend Zakaria, so I'll call it prevarication. He's no expert; he's just a political hack who is spinning wildly and untruthfully to try to have something negative to say about the President.
"So what changed this week? It's not clear. The charitable interpretation would be that the South Korean government received assurances that the North was serious about talks to eliminate its arsenal. Let's be clear that North Korea has announced no concessions, no reversal of its arsenal, no denuclearization."
That's Zakaria's "expert" view; now let's consider the actual facts. North Korea has suspended it's nuclear testing. North Korea has suspended its missile testing. North Korea has agreed to stop complaints about joint US - South Korea military exercises. Each of these three are a major concession. Indeed, the first two of these concessions are the very ones that President Trump made conditions that North Korea had to satisfy before there could be talks of any sort. That's another way of say that Zakaria is totally wrong when he says that the NK's announced no concessions.
Now it is true that the North Koreans did not announce that they would denuclearize. That's the subject for discussion in the talks. What Zakaria is claiming ought to have happened is the equivalent of a union negotiation with management in which the management agrees to speak to the union representatives only after they first concede that the union will accept whatever the management offers. That's not how talks are supposed to work.
The truth is that President Trump got major concessions from the North Koreans. Zakaria on CNN cannot concede that success by Trump, sohe resorts to misstating the facts. Most people would just call it lying, but that might offend Zakaria, so I'll call it prevarication. He's no expert; he's just a political hack who is spinning wildly and untruthfully to try to have something negative to say about the President.
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