U.S. President Donald Trump went into his meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this week without having ever somehow accumulated the vast foreign policy experience that he lacked coming into office. In other words, he was well poised to make a mark in connection to the whole event that was uniquely Trump-ian and represented him laughing in the face of established norms, for better or for worse.
One way in which he did so was through the presentation of a “movie trailer” to the dictatorial North Korean leader that presented him in a stomach turning positive, laudatory light. The video clip, made to look like the trailer for an actual Hollywood production, casts Kim Jong Un (and Trump while it’s at it) as in a position to change the course of history for the better in a way that close to no one else can.
Speaking of the “cycle of history,” the narrator speaking in the video says at one point:
‘While this cycle repeats, the light of prosperity and innovation has burned bright for most of the world. History is always evolving, and there comes a time when only a few are called upon to make a difference, but the question is — what difference will the few make?’
When the narrator mentioned the “few” that could perhaps make a difference, the video featured bright, positively styled images of Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump one after the other.
Watch it below.
Imagine if — to use a prominent recent historical example of a leader like Kim Jong Un — Adolf Hitler was featured in a video like the one above, casting him on bright, equal ground with then-President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Does Trump think of himself in the way he’s presented in that video, as a friendly counterpart to Kim Jong Un, with both men on some kind of “elevated plane” letting them pull the puppet strings of history? The North Korean leader is known, to be clear, for ordering executions as often as he pleases and presiding over a brutal police state in which his people live in misery — and this dictator is the guy that Trump is suckering up to.
Trump wasn’t alone in making the video clip in question; it’s not as though he can be expected to have made it on his phone. Someone, somewhere else in the administration also thought that it was a good idea to paint a dictator as if he was a movie hero. The clip goes so far one point as to feature the narrator saying:
‘Destiny Pictures presents: a story of opportunity.’
The video is not the only instance of Trump and his team acting as though they’re fans of the North Korean regime. At another point while in Singapore to meet with Kim Jong Un, Trump said that he’d formed a “special bond” with the dictator.
He dismissed the possibility that the video clip he presented him with could be used as propaganda inside North Korea since it depicts the leader as a movie hero, but that doesn’t mean the possibility no longer exists. The very existence of the video does not bode well for the future of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, indicating that it’s as dedicated to dictators as ever.
Featured Image via Kevin Lim/The Strait Times/Handout/Getty Images
