Reporter Jacob Soboroff has a viral Twitter thread about his visit with other reporters to a facility holding (i.e. imprisoning) boys from immigrant families in Texas.

Just finished tour, don’t even know where to start.

One of the first things you notice when you walk into the shelter — no joke — a mural of Trump with the quote “sometimes losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”

Presidential murals everywhere. But that one is 1st.

— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) June 13, 2018

That eloquent quote? Sebastian Murdock at Huffington Post found the source:

At a facility in Texas holding more than 1,400 immigrant children, a mural of Trump stares them in the face. His featured quote, “Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war,” is from his book “Art of the Deal” and is in reference to his failed attempt to evict tenants from their homes in 1985.

Damn. Immigrant children forcibly taken from their parents and imprisoned by Trump’s people on Trump’s orders are greeted by a bleak aphorism about his failed effort to evict people from his crappy racially-exclusive apartments more than thirty years ago. Daaaaaamn.

The HP summarizes:

At a Texas facility holding nearly 1,500 migrant children, a mural of President Donald Trump with a quote about his past attempt to evict New York tenants greets the children detained there.

On Wednesday, MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff joined other reporters in a tour of the Brownsville facility, which detains up to 1,500 boys, ages 10 to 17, who have been separated from their parents by the U.S. government. In the building ― an old Walmart ― administrators give children two hours of outdoor time, provide them with limited space within the facility and instruct them to go to bed at 9 p.m.

Well at least we know we don’t have to worry about their basic competence.

President Donald Trump and US officials seem confused over whether notes were taken during Trump’s private meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on Tuesday.

After the two leaders signed a joint statement, Trump gave a wide-ranging press conference. During this time, according to a White House transcript, Trump and a person he refers to as “Mike,” thought to be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, appeared to be unsure whether notes were taken during a 38-minute one-on-one meeting with Kim earlier in the day.

Business Insider then quotes from the official White House transcript:

Q: Is there a transcript of (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT: What?

Q: Is there a transcript of (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT: Mike, do they have a transcript? They probably have a rough transcript, which you can give us, if you have one.

Q: So that was recorded?

THE PRESIDENT: No, they didn’t record it. I don’t think they recorded it. Are there any recordings of it? I wish there were. Because it is interesting stuff.

Q: (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT: Say it?

Q: (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t. We probably have some notes or something. But they have, actually, detailed notes, I would imagine. But we had a great conversation. It was a very heart-felt conversation.

Q: How do you believe (inaudible) verify —

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t have to verify because I have one of the great memories of all time. So I don’t have to. Okay? Okay?

So not even basic competence then. Okay? Okay.

The Trump people have planted an agent in the State Department to vet people for Loyalty to Trump.

A senior advisor to the State Department appointed just two months ago has been quietly vetting career diplomats and American employees of international institutions to determine whether they are loyal to President Donald Trump and his political agenda, according to nearly a dozen current and former U.S. officials.

Of course loyalty to a particular president is not supposed to be a criterion for career diplomats, in fact it’s decidedly supposed not to be, but hey, the rules don’t apply when Trump is emperor.

Mari Stull, a former food and beverage lobbyist-turned-wine blogger under the name “Vino Vixen,” has reviewed the social media pages of State Department staffers for signs of ideological deviation. She has researched the names of government officials to determine whether they signed off on Obama-era policies — though signing off does not mean officials personally endorsed them but merely cleared them through the bureaucratic chain. And she has inquired about Americans employed by international agencies, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations, asking their colleagues when they were hired and by whom, according [to] the officials.

Are you now or have you ever been disloyal to Our Divine Leader?

Stull also requires that every directive issued by the office be reviewed by her first, causing a bureaucratic bottleneck and even stalling issues that appear to be priorities of the White House.

According to two officials, she has stripped all references to “international law” and “international order” from action items and memos coming from the international organization bureau.

Ah here we go again – just a few days ago Trump people were sneering at the “rules-based international order” in connection with the G7 meeting. They’re all authoritarians all the way down. There are no rules, there is only the will of the führer.

Stull was largely unknown in diplomatic circles in Washington until her appointment in April. Her bio cites her work as a lobbyist in the food and beverage industry, which included work for the Grocery Manufacturers of America. More recently, she served as a senior fellow at American Opportunity, a Virginia-based conservative group affiliated with former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.

She also previously worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization as a partnerships and outreach advisor. But several diplomatic sources said that she left the organization on contentious terms.

Stull’s conservative politics can be gleaned from her decade-old wine blog, where one trip to the wine store for bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne became a vehicle for knocking former President Jimmy Carter and promoting the expansion of oil drilling sites in the United States.

On her Twitter feed, Stull has criticized the U.N. as “bloated” and “biased,” dismissed the U.N. Human Rights Council as an “abject failure,” and derided UNESCO, the organization that supports international education, culture, and history, as the U.N.’s “seedy underbelly.”

So no wonder the emperor’s people hired her for the State Department.

North Korea is pointing out the obvious fact that it rolled Dealmaker Trump.

A day after its leader’s historic talks with President Trump, North Korea wasted no time on Wednesday spinning the results in its favor, claiming it had won major concessions from the United States.

The authoritarian country’s state-controlled news media said that Mr. Trump had promised to eventually lift sanctions against the North and to end joint military drills with South Korea. It also said the United States had agreed to a phased, “step-by-step” denuclearization process for the North, rather than the immediate dismantling of its nuclear capability.

I guess it left unsaid the part about having no intention of denuclearizing at all.

The joint statement that Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump signed on Tuesday contained vaguely worded commitments to “complete denuclearization,” “new” relations between their countries and a “peace regime” on the peninsula. In many ways, it was a rehash of agreements that the two nations had reached in the past but never honored.

It was some words. Apparently Trump doesn’t realize that there have been some words before. It’s too bad he doesn’t listen to anyone but himself.

Only after the signing ceremony did it emerge that more commitments had apparently been made. In a post-summit news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Trump announced that the United States would end joint military exercises with its South Korean allies, which Pyongyang has long denounced as rehearsals for an invasion of the North. The news appeared to catch both the South Korean government and the United States military off guard.

Whoopsie! Gotta be ready for surprises when Trump is involved.

Also on Wednesday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that Mr. Trump had agreed to “lift sanctions” once bilateral relations improve. Mr. Trump had said on Tuesday that the sanctions would stay in place until North Korea dismantled enough of its nuclear program to make it difficult to reverse course. Mr. Trump said the denuclearization process would begin “very soon” and happen “very quickly.”

But the North Korean news agency said the two leaders had agreed to a phased process in which Pyongyang would bargain away its nuclear arsenal in stages, securing reciprocal actions from the United States at each step. Such a process has been opposed by American hard-liners like John R. Bolton, now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, who has argued in the past that the North must quickly dismantle and ship out its nuclear weapons program in its entirety, as Libya did more than a decade ago.

Blah blah blah; the Nuclear Threat Is Over; Trump said so!

“President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday on Twitter. “No longer — sleep well tonight!”

The god has taken care of it!

Says Trump:

everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!

Foreign Policy gives us the background:

Here are the major talks and nuclear milestones that came before Trump:

1985: North Korea acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It did not, however, complete an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement.

1992: North and South Korea signed the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, agreeing not to test, produce, posses, or deploy nuclear weapons, and agreeing to mutual verification inspections.

In 1994…

the Clinton administration and North Korea signed the “Agreed Framework” to freeze North Korea’s nuclear program. Most experts agree this was the closest Washington came to a successful deal with North Korea: Pyongyang agreed to freeze construction of nuclear reactors and production of plutonium in exchange for aid, fuel shipments, and other economic benefits.

The closest! But then…not so much.

2002: The Agreed Framework set up under Clinton broke down. President George W. Bush, who took a harder-line stance on Pyongyang than his predecessor, accused North Korea of cheating by secretly pursuing a uranium enrichment program. North Korea accused the United States of backing out of its end of the deal.

China hosted talks. No results. North Korea said nope nope nope.

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. Talks collapsed over the issue of allowing inspectors in. Kim Jong Il died and his son Jong Un took over.

2012: President Obama tried to push Pyongyang to the negotiating table by ratcheting up sanctions. But Kim Jong Un scuppered a final deal that would have halted North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and allowed in international inspectors in exchange for U.S. aid. (Town says it is likely because Kim had to display strength to consolidate power after his father’s death.) Meanwhile, North Korea continued to make strides in its nuclear weapons program.

But then a miracle occurred, and Donald Trump by the power of his shining presence alone terminated the Nuclear Threat from North Korea.

H/t Leigh Williams

Renowned China scholar and shoe-seller Ivanka Trump tweeted an Ancient Chinese Proverb yesterday, except that it was greeted by many people pointing out that it’s not a Chinese proverb. Oh yeah? Well what is it then?! A commonplace thought.

“Those who say it can not be done, should not interrupt those doing it.” -Chinese Proverb

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) June 11, 2018

Those who say it can not be done, should not interrupt those doing it.

Oh, awesome. Also, those who don’t like what’s for dinner, can go out and get their own. Similarly, those who forget to walk the dog, can damn well clean up the poop right this second before doing anything else. Likewise, those who like to pull in lots of $$$ from expensive dreck, do well to have a rich corrupt daddy to make it all happen. Chinese proverbs, every one of them.

A lack of a clear source for Trump’s tweet has some people speculating the first daughter either made it up or, a more likely explanation, cut and pasted the saying from an unreliable website. In the meantime, the search for this “proverb” through ancient Chinese texts has become something of a viral Quixotic quest in China, filled with many a sarcastic comment:

“Did you get that from a fortune cookie?”

“估计是 fortune cookie 上学来的…”

But

"You can call any old shit a Chinese proverb on the internet."
–Confucius https://t.co/lCcBwtKm5g

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) June 11, 2018

Three minutes of googling suggests this is a fake Chinese Proverb. It seems in fact to be American from the turn of the 20th c.—which makes sense, since its spirit is can-do Americanism. But why are Trump WH aides giving our proverbs to China, increasing our proverb deficit? https://t.co/bqjbZhXlQr

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 11, 2018

Dr. Seuss in 1941:

The reference is to the ships that brought Jewish refugees from the Nazis to US ports only to be turned around and sent back to the Einsatzgruppen and the Zyklon B. Note the “America First” on Mama’s shirt.

Creepy beyond belief – the White House created a propaganda movie to go with the summit.

Reporters crowded into a Singapore auditorium Tuesday, expecting President Trump to walk out and announce the results of his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Suddenly, two huge screens on either side of the empty podium came to life. Soaring music boomed over the speakers, and the reporters were bombarded with a montage portraying North Korea as some sort of paradise.

Golden sunrises. Gleaming skylines and high-speed trains. Children skipping through Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang, North Korean flags waving between images of Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Lincoln Memorial.

In a split-screen shot, Kim Jong Un waved to an adoring crowd while President Trump stood beside him with his thumb in the air. The pair appeared over and over again, like running mates in a campaign video.

The film went on like this for several minutes, with brief interludes of missiles, soldiers and warships interrupting the fanfare. Some journalists, unable to understand the Korean-language narration, assumed they were watching one of Pyongyang’s infamous propaganda films. “What country are we in?” asked a reporter from the filing center.

Then it played again, with English narration, then Trump came out and said haha surprise the White House made it, to encourage Kim.

“I hope you liked it,” Trump told the reporters. “I thought it was good. I thought it was interesting enough to show. … And I think he loved it.”

As the president explained it, the video was an elevator pitch — the sort of glitzy production that Trump might have once used to persuade an investor to finance a hotel and that he now hopes will persuade the leader of one of the most repressive regimes in the world to end nearly 70 years of international isolation and militant hostility to the United States.

Deep resonant voice: Will he choose peace or will he choose annihilation?

“Of those alive today, only a small number will leave a lasting impact,” the narrator said near the beginning, as alternating shots of Trump, Kim and North Korean pageantry flashed on the screen. “And only a very few will make decisions or take actions to renew their homeland, or change the course of history.”

Geddit? Geddit? Trump is one of them! Trump is one of the very very very few. Bow down before Trump. Trump is glorious, resplendent, shining, excrorishilated.

“You can have medical breakthroughs, an abundance of resources, innovative technology and new discoveries,” the narrator said, the footage more and more resembling a Hollywood movie trailer as it built to its finale:

“Featuring President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un in a meeting to remake history,” the narrator concluded, as Korean words flashed on a black background: “It is going to become a reality?”

STARRING PRESIDENT DONALD DONALD DONALD TRUMP.

Trump admitted that some of the imagery he pitched may have been a little far-fetched, as North Korea is mired in poverty, internationally isolated, and has been mismanaged for decades by a family of dictators — Kim, his father and grandfather.

“That was done at the highest level of future development,” Trump said of his pitch video. “I told him, you may not want this. You may want to do a much smaller version. … You may not want that — with the trains and everything.”

He waved his hands. “You know, with super everything, to the top. It’s going to be up to them,” he said.

And then, in his usual style, Trump was thinking out loud about the “great condos” that might one day be built on the “great beaches” of North Korea.

“I explained it,” he said. “You could have the best hotels in the world. Think of it from the real estate perspective.”

Condos! Gold-encrusted condos! Golden golf courses! Gold leaf casinos! Gold dogs, gold horsies, gold chocolate cake!

Jesus h christ almighty.

Trump says he trusts Kim Jong Un. And if he's wrong? "I may be wrong, I mean I may stand before you in six months and say, 'Hey I was wrong,'" said Trump, before adding, "I don't know that I'll ever admit that, but I'll find some kind of an excuse." https://t.co/J2k6ehVhW1 pic.twitter.com/onKaUHP2f3

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 12, 2018

Nicholas Kristof doesn’t quite agree with Trump’s take on the hangout with Kim.

Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.

Within North Korea, the “very special bond” that Trump claimed to have formed with Kim will be portrayed this way: Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.

In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little. In a joint statement, Kim merely “reaffirmed” the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992.

“They were willing to de-nuke,” Trump crowed at his news conference after his meetings with Kim. Trump seemed to believe he had achieved some remarkable agreement, but the concessions were all his own.

Funny how the genius deal-maker is so excited about a mere statement. Kim said something and wham, miraculous solution achieved. Trump knows Kim means it how exactly? How is it different from the Iran deal that he abruptly pulled us out of? These are difficult questions.

The most remarkable aspect of the joint statement was what it didn’t contain. There was nothing about North Korea freezing plutonium and uranium programs, nothing about destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, nothing about allowing inspectors to return to nuclear sites, nothing about North Korea making a full declaration of its nuclear program, nothing about a timetable, nothing about verification, not even any clear pledge to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.

Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this.

Scary and a great strain on the organ of credulity.

In 1994 there was a deal to freeze North Korea’s plutonium program, complete with a strict monitoring system; nothing like that here – just “he promised.”

There was also something frankly weird about an American president savaging Canada’s prime minister one day and then embracing the leader of the most totalitarian country in the world.

…the next. Yes, there was.

“He’s a very talented man,” Trump said of Kim. “I also learned that he loves his country very much.”

In an interview with Voice of America, Trump said “I like him” and added: “He’s smart, loves his people, he loves his country.”

Oh god. Baby Idiot strikes again.

He mumbled something about human rights but then quickly mumbled something about human rights in other places too so shut up.

Incredibly, Trump told Voice of America that he had this message for the North Korean people: “I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well.”

Glorious genius diplomat! Thank god he didn’t prepare, so that he could come out with sapience like that!

My guess is that Kim flattered Trump, as Moon has, and that Trump simply didn’t realize how little he was getting. On my most recent visit to North Korea, officials were asking me subtle questions about the differences in views of Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley; meanwhile, Trump said he didn’t need to do much homework.

Whatever our politics, we should all want Trump to succeed in reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and it’s good to see that Trump now supports engagement rather than military options. There will be further negotiations, and these may actually freeze plutonium production and destroy missiles. But at least in the first round, Trump seems to have been snookered.

But he’ll never grasp that, so whatever.