About that Kim Jong Un letter

At a Cabinet meeting this week, Trump waved a new [letter from Kim] and declared that people he’s shown it to have “never written letters like that.”

[...]

Trump is so smitten that he privately shows off the notes to guests in the Oval Office, summoning an aide to bring in two stacks of papers — one set in Korean and another translated into English, according to those who have seen them.

  WaPo

FFS.

The letters contain flowery praise, employing honorifics such as “Your Excellency,” which Kim used in a July 6 note that Trump released publicly. Kim touted Trump’s “energetic and extraordinary efforts” and lauded the “epochal progress” of the bilateral relationship.

So, does he also have to have someone tell him what the words mean, even after they're translated?  Or does he just assume anyone calling him "Your Excellency" is saying flattering things?

“We’ve really established a very good relationship,” Trump told reporters.

To Trump, the handful of letters he’s received from Kim since their June summit in Singapore offer an easy retort to reports that his high-stakes bid to persuade the regime to surrender its nuclear weapons program has stalled.

[...]

Former U.S. diplomats scoffed at the idea that Kim’s letters are a sign of increasing personal trust and meaningful progress. Rather, they suggested, Kim has sized up his mark and showered the president with flattery to soften him up at the negotiating table.

Ya think?

“The letters are illustrative of the way that Trump operates and perceives things — that it’s all about him,” said Daniel Russel, who served as a high-level Asia policy official in President Barack Obama’s administration.

Russel noted that as Kim delivered his televised annual New Year’s Day address, he reiterated demands that the United States agree to remove its own nuclear umbrella in defense of South Korea before Pyongyang takes commensurate steps.

Once eager to convince Trump of his willingness to denuclearize, Kim has now reverted more openly to the North’s longtime strategy without feeling “a need to tiptoe around it,” Russel said.

[...]

[For] Kim, who has sought to boost his country’s economic fortunes by persuading foreign nations to lift crippling economic sanctions, the letters have provided a strategic opening to bypass lower-level U.S. officials and directly woo Trump, who during his 2016 campaign questioned the costs of keeping U.S. military troops in South Korea and Japan.

[...]

The White House has confirmed that Trump responded to at least one of the letters Kim has sent Trump since their summit in Singapore, but that response has not been publicly released.

I'm gonna guess it wasn't exactly a letter, but rather an autographed 8x10 glossy photo of Trump.

“It’s been this way for 80 years,” he said of the hostility with North Korea, which was founded in 1948. “If another administration came in . . . you’d be having a nice big, fat war in Asia.”

Let me show you my letters.  You never got letters like this.  Nobody ever got letters like this before.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.