In the crush of urgent news, some astounding events can almost slip past.
At a rally in West Virginia last Saturday, President Trump told the crowd about feelings he has developed for Kim Jong Un. Remember when the president mocked North Korea's supreme leader as "Little Rocket Man," and Kim ridiculed Trump as a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard"?
Something else was going on.
Trump said, "I was really being tough. And so was he. And we'd go back and forth. And then we fell in love. OK? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters. We fell in love. But you know what? Now, they'll say 'Donald Trump said they fell in love, how horrible. How horrible is that? So un-presidential.' "
At least unprecedented.
Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt were uncommonly close leaders during the darkest hours of the Second World War. FDR once cabled Churchill, "It is fun to be in the same decade with you."
But Kim Jong Un, the leader for whom Donald Trump has declared his devotion, presides over a cruel kingdom of repression, torture, starvation, assassinations, abduction, forced abortion, public executions and slave labor. It isn't fun to even be in the same hemisphere with Kim Jong Un.
It wouldn't be surprising for any president to toss an occasional bouquet toward Kim, if it encourages him to abandon nuclear weapons. When Hitler's Germany invaded the U.S.S.R. in 1941, Winston Churchill, who had long denounced Stalin, welcomed him into alliance, and explained, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
But Senator Lindsey Graham, who has recently supported the administration, said this week, "I'm telling President Trump: Enough with 'I love you.' ... There's nothing to love about Kim Jong Un."
The letters between President Trump and Kim Jong Un haven't been made public. But don't you wonder what charm and blandishments have made President Trump so besotted with a man who had his own half-brother poisoned, and his uncle executed? Maybe there's just something about a despot in a high-buttoned pinstripe suit.
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