On Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” host Michael Knowles discusses the difference between the “red lines” of the Obama Administration and President Donald Trump after his summit with Kim Jong-un in Vietnam. Transcript and video below.
This is the quote that people are assailing Trump for, and this doesn’t sound good, I totally agree. When you listen to it you think, “Did he have to? I wish he didn’t have to say that.” This is the line that all of the mainstream media are gonna be playing for the next 48 hours:
President Trump: Those prisons are rough, they’re rough places. [Kim Jong-un] tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.
Talking about the killing of Otto Warmbier, that American student who was killed by North Korea. He came back and he was brain dead, he died shortly thereafter. Trump says he’s asked did Kim Jong-un know about this, did Kim Jong-un do this? He says, look, those prisons are terrible. Kim Jong-un says he didn’t know about it, so I guess I’ll take him at his word.
Yeah, I get it, what you want him to do is go out there and say, “This jerk, he killed an American student!” and then like John Wayne, Trump is gonna pull a gun out of his jacket and shoot Kim Jong-un on site. That would feel really good, but that is not reality, that is not what’s going to happen. By the way, what Trump said here — factually, it’s probably true. I don’t think that Kim Jong-un ordered the killing of Otto Warmbier because he had nothing to gain and a lot to lose from it. I think probably what happened is they took in Otto Warmbier, they tortured him endlessly and they tortured him a little too much and something went wrong and then the kid went brain-dead. We still don’t know exactly why or how he went brain-dead, why or how his torture and his incarceration killed him, and then I think the North Korean regime was terrified. I mean, I think they really wanted to rough him up and use him as leverage. A guy who’s dead or dying is not much leverage then, really extract any concessions from it so just as a technical matter maybe he’s right. But what people are really criticizing him for is that he didn’t just assail Kim Jong-un for the North Korean killing of Otto Warmbier.
Now Kim Jong-un says, “I didn’t know.” Yeah, maybe he didn’t. I don’t think he ordered the killing. Sure, maybe he didn’t know, maybe some guard took it too far. Is that awful? Yes. Does that make an American’s blood boil? Yes. Does it make us want to go to war? Yes. Here is where you see that Donald Trump is the exact opposite of Barack Obama.
Barack Obama talked real tough. Oh, he said the prettiest words, didn’t he? And then he gave away the farm. Oh, red lines… were talking tough on the mullahs…and then take anything you want. Flying airplanes full of American cash to drop off with the Iranian mullahs, thanking Iran for taking our sailors hostage, anything to get those sailors back. Concessions to Syria, concessions to everybody. But he would talk tough, he’d give good speeches, wouldn’t he? President Trump doesn’t talk tough on King Jong-un, he talks like he’s negotiating. He says “well Kim Jong-un, he’s a smart guy, yeah he’s a smart, smart guy. Yeah, well he says he didn’t know about his state’s killing of Otto Warmbier, I guess I’ll take him at his word.”
Ok, so he talks really nice, he talks in a flattering way, but then he doesn’t give away anything. Which of those two guys do you want to lead your country — the one who tells you every pretty little thing you want to hear and then sells out your country from underneath you? Or the guy who’s willing to make rhetorical concessions but never make any hard concessions, any tangible concessions? Obviously, you want the latter.