North Korea basically gives Mike Pompeo the finger
Trump seems to have really fumbled this one. It appears that Kim Jong-Un played him. Trump cancelled the military preparation exercises with South Korea and has basically ignored the fact that China and Russia have resumed trading with North Korea. So North Korea has essentially gotten everything they wanted and more. Meanwhile, Kim has not only failed to begin the process of denuclearization, but actually seems to have stepped up his nuclear program!
And we’re surprised by this? He’s completely incompetent at his job, which was likely why Putin gaslighted the country to get him into office. Now with the US floundering with impotent executive leadership, and congress deadlocked in factional bickering, Putin (and China AND apparently North Korea) is basically free to do as he pleases without effective US/NATO interference. Good job GOP. You’ll have a prominent place in the story when future historians write “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire”.
I was with you up until “Good job GOP.” Even though Trump choose to run as a Republican (a wise move on his part since Clinton’s nomination simply wasn’t going to be contested), leadership on both sides of the aisle need to look in the mirror on why we are where we are today.
Seriously, how did we ever get to a place where neither party can produce a candidate capable of defeating a guy who’s never before served in ANY public office? How does the state of our politics reach a point where obvious concepts such as “maybe we shouldn’t have people just crossing our borders as they please” and “we really should produce more goods domestically” are radical notions that large swaths of the population are so hungry to hear someone say, they’ll throw their support behind a con man–whose solutions to these matters are completely impractical, by the way–because he’s the only one expressing them from that high a platform?
The ascension of Trump to the Presidency isn’t itself the disease. It’s merely a symptom of a long-broken political system. At its core, the reason Trump is president is so many people were so tired of the old bullshit, they decided to give some new bullshit a try.
The easiest way to keep Trump out of office would’ve been to run somebody who could’ve beaten him. Unfortunately, neither party proved up to what by all means should have been a pretty easy task, with or without the presence of fake facebook and Twitter accounts.
And as you alluded to, Congress could be executing some damage control even now after the fact, but they’re too busy looking out for themselves and drawing lines in the sand to actually do anything sensible in the best interests of the country.