Trump to North Korea: I Want You to Want Me

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are both, in relative terms, rookies at the arts of diplomacy. That might explain why the state of American-North Korean diplomacy these days so resembles an awkward adolescent flirtation.

First came the jilted-lover tone of the letter that Trump sent Thursday. Then came a conciliatory statement from North Korea, and by Friday morning, the president was saying that summit might go off as planned on June 12. Defense Secretary James Mattis even dismissed the whole thing a so much teenaged drama, calling it “the usual give and take.”

At the core, this give and take—usual or not—is rooted in a dynamic that the poet Rick Nielsen identified in his 1979 masterpiece “I Want You to Want Me.” Both Trump and Kim badly want a summit with the other, Kim because getting the U.S. to sit down offers his government legitimacy (and perhaps because he believes Trump could be easily manipulated in a face-to-face negotiation), and Trump because he wants to demonstrate that he succeeded in forcing North Korea to the negotiating table where his predecessors could not.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/trump-to-north-korea-i-want-you-to-want-me/561269/

#thisguy

[BigmanPigman]

1. The moron and Kim can have each other...a match made in Hell.

I WANT Robin Zander!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. Kim is going on a charm offensive. I could have predicted that.

They will make us look like the bad guys in this drama.

[monmouth4]

3. I also attribute trump's very quick change of heart about the meeting when he saw the

cartoons and read most of the negative articles. One of the things that jumped out to me was that he would not be getting the Nobel Peace Prize. He really wants one, President Obama got one and he just must have it. I could be way off but he's such a juvenile thinker, it just seems like a possibility to me. I hope Korea says no, too late for re-scheduling.

[mitch96]

4. I think tRump want's this B/C he wants

the Nobel prize... he don't give two shits about N Korea, just him self..
m