The current administration now needs to stand up to Kim Jong-un and other foreign leaders, not defend them, when they flout these democratic principles and the rule of law.
As he wound down his two-day summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, President Trump was asked again to comment on the torture and murder of Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who died in 2017. Warmbier had been studying in North Korea in 2015 when he was arrested and held on bogus charges for 17 months before lapsing into a coma and dying.
Initially, Trump had been highly critical of the North Korean government’s role following Warmbier’s death, condemning the “brutality of the North Korean regime.” But now that the president has befriended Kim, Trump is using a dramatically softer tone. On Thursday, Trump observed that Kim “feels badly about” Warmbier’s demise. He theorized that North Korea’s “top leadership” might not even have been involved in the imprisonment.
The President went out of his way to protect Kim. “I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen,” Trump said. “It just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen.” Trying to put the matter to rest, Trump emphasized, “He tells me he didn’t know about it, and I take him at his word.”
Once again, the president provided cover to a ruthless autocrat. In his news conference in Hanoi, Trump played down North Korea’s horrendous human rights record more generally, describing the situation in an almost matter-of-fact manner. “You’ve got a lot of people,” Trump said. “Big country, a lot of people. And in those prisons and those camps, you’ve got a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. . .. But [Kim] tells me he didn’t know about it.”
By any reasonable standard, the North Korean government’s human rights record is among the worst in the world.
