I’m going to stick my neck out and make a prediction. Predictions don’t count unless it looks like you might be wrong when you make them, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
Here it is: The North Koreans are going to make big concessions to Trump at the up-coming peace and disarmament talks. They will be big concessions, really big. I mean Nobel Peace Prize for both The Donald and Li’l Rocket Man big. And they probably will be legit, Kim Jung Un will give up a lot more than he gets in return, and it will be verifiable and enforceable and all the bystanders, S Korea, Japan, Russia and China, will come out happy and satisfied. And my guess is the results will stand.
So what does this mean for us, other than a threat to nuclear war will be finally put to rest? Trump’s prestige and influence, both domestically and abroad, will soar, his critics will come up looking like ill-tempered little brats, his legislative program will succeed beyond anyone’s dreams, his party will flourish, and his philosophy and ideology will become legitimate overnight. He will maintain his legislative majorities in the House and Senate after the mid-term elections and he will probably get re-elected (or someone who runs on his program) in 2020. And anything that goes wrong because of or during his presidency will be ignored, forgotten and forgiven. The country will change forever, in ways Democrats may find intolerable. Republicans will just give a sigh of relief, yawn and say; “I knew it all along, now about that entitlement reform…”
If you’re waiting for the “but” in this prophecy, there ain’t one. Oh sure, there may be a lot else going on that may explain why the DPRK caves in to covfefe. Maybe Trump’s antics have convinced the world he’s crazy and might just press the Button, so they’ve decided to take him seriously and cooperate because you can’t reason with a madman. Maybe the Chinese are fed up with their troublesome ally and refuse to humor them an longer and supporting them, maybe Un’s power base back home has decided to grow a pair and put limits to his megalomania and recklessness, maybe the PRC has their own side deal with Trump on tariffs, trade, Taiwan and the S China Sea and they are just playing the long game.
Who knows? But it doesn’t matter. If Trump gets his way, he wins, big time in the short run. And there is every good reason to say he deserves to win, regardless of what was going on in the background that may have greased the skids. This is a “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall” moment. Who’s going to complain? And needless to say, nothing turned up by the Mueller probe is going to matter afterwards.
ER has spoken.