Trump can now brag he went to Viet Nam

His bone spurs have healed.

President Donald Trump was looking to flatter his new friend in Singapore when he struck upon an unusual compliment.

He had known plenty of people who had grown up wealthy and whose families were powerful, Trump told Kim Jong Un, the despotic North Korean dictator whose father and grandfather held the same role.

Many of them emerged messed up, Trump said. But, he added, Kim wasn't one of them.

  CNN

To be fair, to Trump, that's not messed up.

Of course, Kim rules North Korea with an iron fist and a disregard for human rights. And his stature was gained through birth, not hard work. But Trump's choice of praise for his new negotiating partner, relayed by a person familiar with the conversation, reflects the US President's determination to flatter his way to nuclear peace in Asia.

Or maybe just to be flattered in return. Nuclear peace isn't a dream of Trump's. It would just go on the ledger for the Nobel Peace Prize committee's consideration.

Before the formal talks begin on Thursday, the two men will sit for a small dinner with only a select number of aides -- an intimate kick-off to a summit balanced on perhaps the world's most improbable diplomatic friendship."It's a very interesting thing to say, but I've developed a very, very good relationship," Trump told the nation's governors on Sunday evening before departing for Hanoi. "We'll see what that means. But he's never had a relationship with anybody from this country, and hasn't had lots of relationships anywhere."

[...]

Trump and Kim have forged a bond built on mutual displays of effusive praise. In back-and-forth letters over the past seven months, each has used flowery language to describe the other and appeal to his sense of ego, a trait both men carry in spades.

[...]

After the two men meet for dinner on Wednesday evening, they will sit for extended talks on Thursday, including a one-on-one session with only their translators present.

Will Trump forbid his translator to take notes or talk about the meeting?

With political hostility running high in Washington, Trump will find a more favorable reception in Hanoi, where signs have been erected around the city hailing the prospects for peace. T-shirts emblazoned with the instantly recognizable silhouettes of the two bombastic leaders are for sale at shops around town. In front of the hotel where Kim is believed to be staying, a bed of roses has been fashioned into the US and North Korean flags, with two hands shaking in the middle.

That's the type of reception Trump had been hoping for in calling for a second summit, which he believes will generate the same type of wall-to-wall television coverage of the first. Some of his aides have warned him that a second go-around would capture less attention, though Trump has largely discounted that advice.

Part of the attraction, Trump believes, is the unlikely affair he's developed with Kim.

Is he wearing his hair in the box shape that he adopted for a while after his first meeting with Kim?

The first sign of the budding pen-pal arrangement came when North Korea's spy chief arrived to the White House bearing a comically oversized envelope containing one of the first effusive missives.

Since then, Trump has taken to carrying around copies of his most recent letter from Kim in his coat pocket, withdrawing it to show both his friends and political adversaries.

Let me guess...it's full of effusive praise that Trump thinks is sincere.

During heated talks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer during this year's government shutdown, Trump whipped out the letter and threw it on the table.

"Read this," he instructed Schumer, before flinging the document over the table in the senator's direction.

Dear god. The fact that he thought that would impress Chuck Schumer is just another piece of evidence that he is absolutely clueless. Sociopaths can't read other people. Narcissists think everyone else sees them the way they see themselves. Trump is a narcissistic sociopath.

"We have a terrific relationship, and we'll see where it goes. Who knows where it goes. But we'll see," Trump said in a video recorded this weekend and played at an event held for the "Trumpettes," a group of supporters at Mar-a-Lago, his private Florida club.

They actually call themselves that!

Trump has [said] that he is in no rush to execute a nuclear deal with North Korea, and the absence of missile and nuclear testing means his diplomatic gambit is working. He's attributed the pause to his personal wooing of Kim, which in Singapore included warm moments like placing his hand on Kim's back and later showing him the interior of his heavily armored limousine (to some consternation from the US Secret Service).

A consummate braggart.

Last time they met, he told us the threat of nuclear weapons attack from Kim was over.

It was in that meeting that Trump first gauged his ability to deal with Kim in person. He had told reporters on his way there he was likely to appraise his interpersonal chemistry with Kim within the first minute of their encounter.

Asked how, Trump pointed to "just my touch, my feel."

Rather like Dubya looking into Putin's eyes and seeing his beautiful soul.

Kim, who had caught wind of the President's comment as he made his own way to Singapore, raised the comment with Trump about an hour into their talks.

[...]

So what did he think of him, Kim asked. Trump offered his thoughts, including his determination that Kim was sort of sneaky -- but not too sneaky.

"But do you trust me?" Kim asked. The President said he did, and that he must trust him if they were ever to forge a deal.

Displaying a quick wit, Kim turned to Trump's national security adviser John Bolton -- a hawkish skeptic of diplomacy with Pyongyang -- and asked if he trusted him, too.

Bolton said if Trump did, then he did, too.

From last June's meeting:

Trump also said he hopes to eventually withdraw US forces from South Korea, but said "that's not part of the equation right now."

"I want to get our soldiers out. I want to bring our soldiers back home," Trump said. "But that's not part of the equation right now. I hope it will be eventually."

  CNN

Maybe this time he'll put that on the trade table for some more hollow promises to denuclearize.

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