June 03, 2018 10:08 AM UTC

Party's Back On In Singapore, Cory Gardner!

• 11 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

USA TODAY’s David Jackson reports via affiliate 9NEWS and it’s so damn exciting:

After a rare meeting with a high-ranking North Korean official, President Trump said Friday he has rescheduled a June 12 summit in Singapore with Kim Jong Un as part of a long-term effort to try and end the latter’s nuclear weapons programs.

In a moment for every red-blooded patriotic American to celebrate, Glorious Leader Donald Trump will meet with North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong Un on the 12th of this month after all! Whatever is what that led Trump to suddenly cancel the meeting a week and a half ago–it’s water under the bridge!

While hailing the promise of an unprecedented summit, Trump also sought to tamp down expectations by saying that “we’re not going to go sign something” at the Singapore meeting. [Pols emphasis] Instead, he said, “the process will begin” on an agreement to have Kim eliminate the nuclear weapons that have generated global tensions for years.

“I think it’s a getting-to-know-you meeting, plus,” Trump told reporters at the White House. [Pols emphasis]

It’s very difficult to contain our enthusiasm–hey, wait a minute. Weren’t there some kind of, you know, benchmarks that the North Koreans were supposed to meet before earning the right to sit down mano y mano with the President of the United States? Didn’t we actually just hear about this recently?

Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO), Chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy, today released the below statement following President Trump’s decision to cancel the summit with Kim Jong Un.

“President Trump has made the right decision to cancel the summit with Kim Jong Un until North Korea is ready to act in good faith to fully denuclearize,” said Gardner. “We must double down on our strategy of maximum pressure and engagement. It’s time to pass my bipartisan legislation, the LEED Act, because it will increase the pressure on Kim Jong Un by implementing a full economic embargo and targeting his regime’s enablers. Our goal of any discussions with North Korea should remain the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

After all, when Barack Obama was President, Sen. Cory Gardner was really super specific and nasty about not having any chit-chat sessions with North Korea without some firm concessions in hand:

“It is extremely disappointing, yet unsurprising, that the Obama Administration would talk with North Korea without tough preconditions, including ending its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, human rights abuses, or cyber attacks. It was dangerously naïve for the Obama Administration to offer concessions to Pyongyang’s Forgotten Maniac, Kim Jong-un, especially when we’ve seen the Iranian nuclear deal fail to change the behavior of that regime,” said Gardner.

Now, we’re going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Sen. Gardner would have been most displeased by an announcement that President Obama was meeting with Kim Jong Un for a “getting-to-know-you meeting.” Even with a little “plus.”

Right? Or are we just Pollyannish to think that anything including hypocrisy of the first order on something as important as nuclear foreign policy…matters anymore?

As of this writing, we haven’t seen Gardner try to put this all back together. For whatever reason the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee On East Asia, The Pacific, And International Cybersecurity Policy hasn’t jumped back on the North Korea roller-coaster publicly since he backed Trump’s decision to cancel the summit.

But at this point, it doesn’t matter. Gardner’s only job now is apparently to shine whatever turd Trump lays.