“We suffered with Obamacare,” Trump said. “Make no mistake. This is a repeal and replace of Obamacare. Make no mistake about it,” he declared before pausing for a personal boast. “I predicted it a long time ago. I said it’s failing and now it’s obvious that it’s failing. It’s dead—it’s essentially dead.”
Earlier that day, the House had passed the American Health Care Act. The legislation would go on to fail in the Senate. It did not repeal and replace Obamacare. There would be no signing ceremony. It was a premature victory lap.
Trump does this a lot. He famously promised that Americans would grow tired of winning if they elected him president, and he seems to think we won’t notice if he celebrates before there’s an actual victory. After the failed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans did eliminate the individual mandate as part of the tax reform they passed late last year. The individual mandate was a noxious part of Obamacare, to be sure. But it was only a part. You wouldn’t have known this from the president’s celebration at a December cabinet meeting: “When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed. . . . We have essentially repealed Obamacare.”
There’s little question that the United States and its allies have retaken territory from ISIS in Iraq and Syria and significantly degraded the group. President Trump deserves credit for the decisions that produced this progress. But ISIS is far from defeated—in Syria, in Iraq, or elsewhere. (See our editorial “A War to Be Won” elsewhere in these pages.)
It’s tempting to dismiss all this as the braggadocio typical of politicians, as yet another case in which we are not meant to take the president literally. But ultimately a president’s words matter, and they matter a lot. Nowhere is this more true than in the delicate diplomatic dance underway between the United States and North Korea.
President Trump’s words shape the way Kim Jong-un sees the United States and its resolve. They shape the way our allies in the region see U.S. leadership. They shape the way Americans see the threat from the North Korean dictator. They shape the way our enemies elsewhere size up the president and his national security team.
And Trump’s comments last week suggest he’s a sucker waiting to be played. The president volunteered that Kim Jong-un “has really been very open and I think very honorable based on what we are seeing.”
There is nothing remotely honorable about Kim Jong-un. His repressive dictatorship brainwashes and starves its people en masse. Those who resist are—along with their families and friends—sent to inhumane labor camps or killed. He assassinates government officials he suspects of disloyalty. He routinely violates international arms treaties and regularly threatens attacks on his neighbors and the United States. He’s a brutal dictator. If the president thinks Kim is “very honorable” based on what he’s seeing, then he’s not seeing clearly.
Equally worrisome was Trump’s Twitter declaration that the North Koreans have agreed to do what they’ve refused to do for decades. “We haven’t given up anything & they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, & no more testing!” What Kim Jong-un actually said was different. He declared that his country would suspend tests on its weapons during talks and, crucially, that there was no need for such tests because North Korea had achieved its objective of nuclear weapons capability.
Even if Kim had agreed to denuclearization, there would be no reason to believe him. For three decades North Korean dictators have made commitments they never intended to keep in exchange for concessions from the United States and its allies. The fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons capability today is the result of the regime’s duplicity and the gullibility of Western leaders, including presidents from both parties. Those weapons prop up an evil regime and are the only reason the United States is willing to negotiate with an otherwise weak and backward rogue state.
The danger of a Trump-Kim summit is that the president will trumpet whatever Kim offers as a historic triumph. But promises are not victories. And the moment Trump announces a victory, he creates a bad set of incentives for policing whatever deal is struck. If the meeting itself is portrayed as a win, and flimsy North Korean commitments are hailed as successes, any recognition of subsequent problems will threaten to diminish the president’s accomplishment.
