It turns out Whoopi Goldberg and the voice of the mother sloth from “Ice Age” are not the North Korean experts they present themselves as.
On Tuesday’s episode of the morning show “The View” on ABC, the panelists discussed the last 20 years of North Korean diplomacy.
As the Washington Free Beacon noted, the exchange was “painful” to watch.
Actress Whoopi Goldberg (“Beverly Hills Brats,” “Pauly Shore is Dead,” among others) began the proceedings, describing what she regards as the negative transition in North Korea policy between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. According to Goldberg, Clinton’s diplomacy was successful because he gave Kim Jong Il (father of current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un) aid in return for not escalating militarily. Conversely, Bush was bad because he didn’t want to talk to Kim the elder.
Yes, it’s that simple.
Or not. In fact, Clinton’s appeasement policy and Bush’s isolation policy were equal failures that allowed Kim Jong Il’s nuclear program to advance without restraint.
But that was just the start of Goldberg’s lecture.
She continued by describing Kim Jong Un’s rise to power. “He came in quite aggressively, and you know we managed to sort of keep him in check. And now it’s like he’s emboldened by someone who feels the same way he does about Korea.”
Although it’s not clear, we must assume that this “someone” Goldberg refers to is Trump.
Regardless, at this point hostess Joy Behar (“Ice Age, Continental Drift”) chimed in: “Kim Jong Un wants something, they have to figure out what he wants and go to the table. For eight years when Obama was in office, we never heard about nuclear war … Why does [Trump] have to be such a startup, why does he have to be provocative all the time, we’re talking about annihilating millions of people. This is not baby stuff, this is a guy who was leading the ‘Apprentice,’ is now talking about nuclear war.”
Amidst Behar’s comments, Goldberg interrupted to add a clarification on why Kim Jong Un acts so erratically: “You can’t tweet people because they don’t like it.”
Because Trump’s tweets are the focal cause of this crisis.
Still, whatever one thinks of Trump’s policy on North Korea, “The View’s” commentary is typical hypocrisy. They accost Trump for what they view as his failure to take this crisis seriously, yet simultaneously ignore the basic complexities of the situation. When, for example, Behar proclaims that “we never heard about nuclear war” under Obama, does she ever consider that maybe that’s because Obama simply allowed Kim Jong Un to develop his ballistic and nuclear programs unchecked?
Does Goldberg seriously think that Kim will stop firing off ballistic missiles if only Trump stops tweeting?
In the view of “The View,” solving the North Korea crisis is as simple as throwing money at Kim Jong Un and “finding out what he wants.”
But in that simplicity, they miss the central problem posed by Kim’s ballistic missile agenda: what if Kim Jong Un isn’t as reasonable as Behar and her fellow panelists assume? What if what he truly “wants” is a nuclear ICBM program with which to blackmail South Korea and threaten the U.S. homeland with nuclear attack?
What then?
At least the guy who ran “The Apprentice” has expert briefers around him. “The View”? They have only their roundtable of shared ignorance.
