New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is upset that President Trump avoided discussing North Korea’s human rights atrocities this week with Kim Jong Un. He is also shocked to see Trump emerge as a cheerleader for the Kim regime.
“It’s breathtaking to see an American president emerge as a spokesman for North Korea,” Kristof writes in his latest column, titled “Trump Was Outfoxed in Singapore.”
[Also read: Obama’s Iran negotiator was ‘taken aback’ by one particular sight at Trump and Kim’s meeting]
Earlier this week, the columnist also said of the White House’s cowardly decision to take North Korea’s obscene human rights violations off the table, “So sad that the Trump is meeting with the most totalitarian leader in the world and won’t let the words ‘human rights’ past his lips. This betrays Otto Warmbier, Megumi Yokota, and 100k prisoners.”
Kristof isn’t wrong. In fact, I agree that Trump’s praise for Kim, coupled with the White House’s decision to ignore the boy-dictator’s human rights abuses, is both a moral failure a major disservice to both North Koreans and Americans.
It’s just a bit annoying, though, to hear this criticism from the same columnist who just last September published a great deal of pro-North Korea propaganda during his stay in Pyongyang.
I haven’t forgotten that Kristof gave North Korea several political wins last year when he put a positive, lighthearted spin on daily life in the country-sized concentration camp. Kristof, for example, posted a photo on his Instagram account of North Korean students, captioned, “Every kid at this North Korea high school supposedly signed up to join the army after the Trump speech to the UN.”
“They said they’ll keep studying until war breaks out, which some say could happen any time. It’s all part of a mass ideological mobilization – yet here the kids are still practicing their singing. At a factory, the manager likewise told me that all 1500 employees had signed up for the army on Monday, yet they were still at work,” he added.
This is propaganda. The claim that North Korea’s citizens have signed up for military duty en masse is a lie that comes straight from the highest levels North Korea’s government.
He also posted a photo of an amusement park with the caption: “North Koreans like to have fun, too. People were shouting happily on this ride on an amusement park. It’s a side of the country that doesn’t always come through.”
Woo-hoo. The lighter side to tyranny
Kristof also uploaded this picture from a country where the people are literally starving to death:
“Lunch in Pyongyang, North Korea, at a pizza restaurant with live music,” read the picture’s caption.
Kristof suggested later that he was playing along with North Korea’s propaganda efforts because he didn’t want to end up like Otto Warmbier. Fair, but as I said at the time, if covering North Korea requires that one also spread its propaganda around, perhaps a visit isn’t worth it.
[Trump: Otto Warmbier helped make North Korea summit possible]
Kristof is right when he says that acting as a spokesman for the Norks does little to help the millions of victims trapped within Kim’s nightmare. This applies to more than just the president.
