Is there a dictator Trump doesn’t like?
Very Good Relationship with Kim Jong Un
Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises! While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!” Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Aug 16, 2026, 3:04 PM
What Trump Admires
Once again Trump trashes allies and warms up to dictators. He admires the absolute control of Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Don’t worry, this is “somewhat unrelated (?)” to South Korea wisely refusing to get involved in Trump’s stupid war with Iran.
But if Trump listened to allies (other than Israel), we would not be in this mess.
I don’t object to reduced military spending. In fact, I think we should declare the war won (for the 50th time), except this time we should leave.
I do object to the asinine tone of Trump’s statement and the further trashing of allies just to feed his larger than galaxy-sized ego.
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russia in the decade after collapse and before putin became the new czar, was a great place to be and do business. i’m hoping as amerika collapses many parts of usa will be delightful without the weight of the world wide warmongering empire. i hope it lasts a generation or more.
Fool
you are a child.
You are hoping America collapses. That is about as temper tantrum child like thinking you can exhibit. This parties over. I’m taking my ball and going home. Hrrmmpph.! You’re the child…fool!
Many of you disappoint me, on this topic. That includes you, Mish.
Correctly, you rarely believe what Trump says. But when he claims to “have a good relationship with” or say anything nice about a nation the USA press has demonized since before we were born, suddenly you think Trump was speaking genuinely. And you pile on with the circa 1950 cold war propaganda memes, as though you havent learned how everything we are told is so grossly distorted you should discard everything you ever learned about Oceania’s enemies and seek out any books or blogs that argue *Oceania* was and remains “the bad guy”, so you finally hear something not funded and approved by our domestic mafias.
It’s not his words, it’s his actions that tell us so much. He fails epically, all the time. Other than cruelty and vengeance, he’s a failure. He should not be in charge of anything important. Ever! How weird do you have to be to splice and dice trumps words, to have Mish sound hypocritical. But let’s not forget his words altogether. He’s a documented liar. The endless lying by itself does not clear him. Oh…he’s always a liar therefore you should never believe him and somehow now you do… bullshit. Trump is only friends with communist dictators. Because he is a communist dictator. Floors me the Republican Party is going full communist. Top down control. Culture control, media control, terrify law firms who might fight him. Destroy universities to control thinking. Put monuments to yourself everywhere. Trump and today’s Republican Party are true communists.
Universities are controlled by leftist thinking professors, to indoctrinate college students. Socialism is the in thing there now. Woke Marxism is culture control. Corrupt Lawfare was used against Trump.
dumpy trump is the real marxist. he’s taken government ownership of dozens of private enterprises. marxism and fascism are kissing cousins. amerikans love them both.
Your manis a communist. You just don’t get it.
All done in service of turning the US into a Russian-style mafia state.
Life for most Americans will be brutal & short.
He’s such a little simp for dictators.
Who your friends are says a lot about you. Putin, Epstein, Kim, and that crowd from Jan 6.
Hw was never a part of the cool kids. He’s hated everyone for hating him. He’s getting even with us all because he’s so insecure and knows he’s a moron. He learned early on that he just had to be cruel and vindictive and a bully. That’s all the skills he really has.
People casually throw out Trump being friends with Putin and Kim Jong Un as if repeating it makes it true. He flatters other leaders on occasion (IMO in a manipulative way), but there’s no evident sincere follow-through. He met with Putin in Anchorage, supposedly had some kind of understanding, but hasn’t been to Moscow since, and if anything has committed to further support for Zelensky and deep strikes into Russia.
Why would the leader of the world’s greatest superpower—and commander-in-chief of the most powerful military on Earth—need anyone’s help dealing with one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries?
If the task is really as straightforward as we are being led to believe, then why the secrecy, the concessions, and the need for outside assistance?
Something isn’t adding up. Someone is hiding something.
There is nothing “hidden”. There is no mystery here. Just an administration that refuses to accept reality.
The Pentagon has been wargaming the shit out of this war scenario for ages and it was always known that once the Strait was closed, short of a 1 million men ground invasion costing an obscene amount of money and resources, there was nothing the US could do militarily to re-open it.
That is it.
https://www.aljazeera.com/#flips-6403562883112
Iran is neither poor nor isolated.
Wake up. Your reality is not the reality.
Next time, take a look at the map of Iran and its neighboring countries. It is not isolated. Far from it.
Iran is also an autarkic economy – decades of Western embargoes have forced it to manufacture its own consumer vehicles, steel, and pharmaceuticals domestically.
LOL Thank you.
When we speak of isolation, do not mistake it for a mere matter of geography or physical distance; the world’s most suffocating borders are not drawn with fences, but with financial blockades. I am speaking of an absolute economic quarantine—a systemic exile from the global financial architecture that paralyzes a nation’s ability to trade, build, and survive.
How weird; if you like North Korea so much, why not ask them to join the attack on Iran? Lets see what they say.
He doesn’t care one way or another, he’s simply under orders to get a Central Bank in there one way or another.
It’s not galaxy-sized, it’s a black hole. It sucks in all the light in the world and turns it into darkness.
This video explains how to spot someone without a soul. The description eerily describes Trump in so many ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilJaOE1-ryg
Yeah, I’ll pass. Thanks.
Pass all you want. You would probably be one of those that “passed” on Einstein’s theory of relativity too.
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/11/100-authors-against-einstein-a-look-in-the-rearview-mirror/
I hope you get the medical attention you need…
The TOR is based upon the observable nature of the universe. it can be studied, tested, and falsified. Souls don’t exist. That inner voice is just the normal function of your brain. The difference between the functioning of your knee and your brain is that you can see your knee move. You can’t “feel” your brain think so you are stuck assuming there is someone is their chatting away and calling it your “soul”. But neuro-surgeons can change your brain and cause your brain (soul) to change radically.
Wow, you contradicted yourself in almost every sentence there. Hallmarks of someone trying to feign intelligence but can’t quite get there.
That’s dumb
You can’t say any quackery is actually the truth because people thought Einstein was wrong.
People think the earth is flat too
I think they’re dumb
Lack of soul in this case is simply severe narcissistic personality disorder. Check out the DSM. Einstein’s theories were truly revolutionary for their time. He could have been given 5 Noble Prizes. Consequences of his work are still being explored experimentally. But not even he accepted the consequences of his own equations which demonstrated that black holes were possible. Accepted proof was not attained until one year after Hawkins’ death. A shame as the Nobel prize committee does not award posthumously.
But how does the Sky Wizard feed into all this?
Can’t review the video until later but the idea is interesting. I encourage you to watch Dark Matter on Apple TV. The premise is about superposition. If you love Sci-Fi like I do Apple TV is really hot right now.
meanwhile: US Air Force jet engine manufacturing plagued by ‘significant challenges’
https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/08/03/us-air-force-jet-engine-manufacturing-plagued-by-significant-challenges/
The logistics and supportability challenges become a lot less complex when you stop trying to be the world’s policeman. When you are buying less weapon systems and less spares, you have less to focus on and less distractions. You can also pare your workforce down to the most competent people and get rid of the no-loads who can barely fog a mirror.
Bring the troops home. All of them.
They’re looking for new companies that can deliver …
? ROSTEC
The materials (titanium; tantalum) problem is insoluble.
Try buying a knife or a gun from a dealer after you have informed you need it to kill him.
Consider this possibility. US is considering nukes in Iran. Russia and China would understand/measure their responses. Jong Un is a wild card. Sweet talk the dictator now avoiding complications over a nuked Iran. Japan and South Korea really feeling the pinch without those Parriot missiles.
$1 trillion dollar/year military budget.
Multiple declarations that Iran is defeated and their military is destroyed.
Multiple declarations that the US controls the strait or that the strait is open.
And now the US is so out of options that some people are contemplating the possibility of dropping nukes in Iran. Talk about complete and total military defeat.
Pondering about nuking Iran is not a sign of strength and power, it is the ultimate admission of impotence and incompetence.
The US is so out of options against a country that has the same GDP as Louisiana, that weapons originally designed and built as deterrents for a “mutual-assured destruction” scenario are now being considered.
America is indeed great again. Holy shit.
Just because the US shouldn’t doesn’t mean the US wouldn’t.
Nuking a country, because you are embarrassed you lost a pointless imperialist war? That would make the US the single most evil country of all time. I am not saying it is impossible, but if that’s who the US is, Europe should close its borders to the US and achieve digital sovereignty urgently.
“That would make the US the single most evil country of all time.”
Is that still under discussion? At least germans can tell themselves that the situation in 1933 was desperate, they chose what seemed like the least bad viable option at the time.
Americans cannot tell themselves the same about 1991.
I doubt the US would nuke Iran, but Israel will with glee. And the US will back up Israel if anybody has anything to say about it. I doubt Pakistan would even respond.
Odd your post got so heavily down-voted.
A nuke dropped on Iran would poison the air, water and food of Israel. That’s why they haven’t dropped one.
Instead, they want the US to destroy Iran with conventional weapons.
The U.S. not only count dictatorships among its allies, but they also installed quite a few, including in S. Korea.
Boom goes the dynamite!!!
It’s a centuries-old tradition.
A two and a half centuries old tradition, to be precise.
Surely this move has nothing to do with America having to move all of its military assets to throw at the war they lost the minute they declared it. No sir! We love North Korea actually! Nothing to see here folks, just a strategic realignment towards being a third world Christofascist rump state.
No 5 d chess/ no idiot just a vengeful old man who is upset that sk would not join him in his war.
Exactly.
Impossible to exaggerate the degree to which pettiness and purely personal whims dictate official policy with Trump on deck.
That’s what makes him a dictator. The ability to use government to go after political opposition is the communist/fascist hybrid that trump has shit onto this nation.
Really. Continued plutonium production for warheads, troops in Ukraine, missiles in Ukraine, aide to Iran.
Trump has done nothing but make the US and its likely former allies weaker.
The US had an almost $1 trillion dollar military budget in 2025 and yet a country with the same GDP as the state of Louisiana has disrupted the entire US military logistics chain in the Middle East and Indian ocean.
This is truly a historical watermark moment.
Indeed. And kicking us on the way out!
Trump is probably trying to break the Russia – North Korea – Iran alliance. Is there any meaningful action behind the clumsy rhetoric? History showed that American polarizing interventions since the Clinton/Bush uniparty era “in order to prevent or stop something“, had serious side effects.
You give him way too much credit. He does not think that strategically in matters of global geo-politics. He was hanging out and having fun with Kim Jong Un as far back as 2017. He just likes the guy.
<<You give him way too much credit.>>
Well, I would like it to be like that. Come to think of it, everyone nowadays is projecting their own wishes on some political party, regardless of what the party says and does. I have some experience to know that we should not predict outcomes when we have not enough information. Remember the old days, when the newspapers only had a 1-column article with a raster image “The President expressed his confidence in Mr. this or that”.
And we assumed back then, that serious talks were going on.
He probably sees democracies as weak because they won’t support him. If he could turn it all into the handmaid’s tale he would.
So Iran = evil incarnate, but North Korea = sweet wonderful date night. That was like Putin a year or so ago, in Alaska, remember? When Ukraine had “no cards”? Even if I was a MAGA loyalist, my tiny head would be spinning. Change this fool’s diaper and send him to bed.
Its hard to express the depth of ignorance and incompetence in the orange man
Hard? Impossible.
It curdles the mind to contemplate.
We no longer have a carrier presence in the Pacific
The inability to maintain a coherent strategy across administrations is a mark of failure.
Obama himself failed by getting involved in the Syrian war; then we got Trump, who seems utterly incapable of doing anything except reacting. Our navy is pinned down in the Gulf for the foreseeable future trying to enforce a blockade that Trump demands as a price for his failure.
https://apnews.com/article/aircraft-carriers-trump-china-pacific-iran-war-87cfb838de8c13464fa3cab1840ad87d
Yes, it’s not like Obama (and Hillary) were fountains of strategic wisdom. Good to not whitewash that. They did not have it all resolved. But now Trump owns this new level of incoherence. You break it or muddle it up, you own it, past a point.
Trump has managed though to set the bar exceedingly low.
A Brussel sprout has more self awareness.
<<We no longer have a carrier presence in the Pacific>>
Maybe, just maybe, the Bretton Woods agreement and NATO are both entering their last phase. They both extended for a far longer time than intended. The USA has too much debt to keep supporting expensive non-coherent committees. The NATO guys want to keep their high salaries and will fight anyone who’s a threat to that, claiming they are allies. Allies for what? Just in case the USSR attacks us?
It is called a defensive alliance for a reason, but I guess partially it is in support of “Western values”, which makes no sense the US being part of because it has moved from being hypocritical to solidly against them in spirit and in fact. The US is the enemy of human civilisation.
“Defensive alliance” my tail. Note how the defensively attacked Serbia and Libya. Not to mention Afghanistan.
Like the Tripartite Pact was a “defensive alliance”.
Defensive??
Before the end of ww2, Winston Churchill asked for plans to invade USSR.
Shortly after the war and /before/ the Warsaw Pact, NATO was born.
Look up what Lord Ismay said was the purpose of NATO.
Bonus: USA demonstrated their a-bomb twice. Not to subdue a defeated Japan — MacArthur publicly criticzed the decision as totally unnecessary — but to threaten Russia. Plans were drawn up to use them. USSR had to hold onto enough eastern European territory to keep USA airbases and, hence, nuclear weapons far enough distance from Moscow.
I have to agree with you.
My main issue is what happens the day after…
I never thought I would see two superpowers dissolve like this in my lifetime.
They are easy to dissolve, because of conflicts of interest. In the USSR, it just took Lithuania to ask for economic independence, and the whole thing unraveled. US States could ask for financial independence if federal taxes hurt their businesses. Florida comes to mind.
i bet my pals in 2018, that by jan 20, 2029, at least one state would effectively secede from the FEDs. i’m gonna collect my winnings. in my favorite steak house in AZ.
durants
Former US lawmaker claims high-level talks underway on potential nuclear weapons use against Iran
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/former-us-lawmaker-claims-high-level-talks-underway-on-potential-nuclear-weapons-use-against-iran/4028994
October surprise, incoming? A nuclear Tonkin Gulf? Military tail wags political dog?
I think that would be a scare tactic like NK uses. That’s why Taco likes him.
Such nonsense. NK threatens retaliation with them, if attacked.
Kim Jong Un is supplying LOADS of cannon fodder & other military support to Trump’s BFF Vlad for his war of aggression in Ukraine, you see.
But Vlad is a passionate ally of Iran, you see. The common link is North Korea.
At least you got to appreciate the relevant transparency behind the clumsy rhetoric.
Tt doesn’t mean it’s bad just because Trump is doing it, and we don’t know all details.
Because I remember when the US was bombing Libya and Belgrade, and then Iraq, journalists never had enough information to mount any critique. Nobody dared to question “weapons of mass destruction”, and “if you don’t believe us because we’ re politicians, here’s Colin Powell, who talks like Denzel Washington, to convince you.”
By the time journalists got any information to question the righteousness of the wars, they were already over.
Taco has always perferred the bad actors and wants to be like putin.
We need more “bad actors” like Putin. If it weren’t for his restraint in the face of constant NATO-driven provocations, we’d already be in the midst of a nuclear winter.
Oh yes, if anyone deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it’s Putin. Just ignore his invasions of & threats toward neighboring countries & he’ll be a shoo-in!
You need to educate yourself re: the origins of the Ukraine war. It goes back decades. Putin tried diplomacy, tried to warn the West re: expansion of NATO and installation of new weapons systems in member states closer to Russia. CIA/NATO had a direct role arming and training Ukraine forces for war against Russia, with CIA setting up a number of bases within Ukraine. Trump even bragged about how he helped arm Ukraine in his first term, and Angela Merkel admitted that the Minsk agreements were intended to delay and give time to boost Ukraine militarily. This was a provoked war.
Obviously it was NATO who founded Ukraine hundreds and hundreds of years ago, I learned this in school too. Russia had to defend itself from all of its neighbors like Chechnya, Tuva, and the Chukchi the same way, you see! Those are all rightful territories of greater Isr- I mean, Russia, promised to them three thousa- uhh, one thousand years ago! It’s very different from dastardly evil Israel you see!
The CIA was a big sponsor of Chechnya’s rebels. The CIA also had 20 bases inside eastern Ukraine. The American goal of obtaining Sevastopol and turning the Black Sea into a “NATO lake” wasn’t / isn’t to promote world peace. As Lloyd Austin said, the war in Ukraine was to “weaken Russia”. It could have been avoided, but the US didn’t want to avoid it. It wanted to foster it. The 2019 RAND paper “Extending Russia” was a battle plan. Putin’s alternative to invading Ukraine was to allow the vivisection of Russia – a western goal since before the Crimean War.
You forgot perfidious albion? Are you ok?
Did South Carolina, Florida, Texas, California, Alaska have a referendum to join the union? Guam, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama? Korea? Vietnam? Did Europe vote to be occupied by the USA for perpetuity? NATO? Ever heard of Operation Unthinkable? The plans to bomb 70 Soviet cities? Camp Bondsteel? The pre-war plan by Britain & France to invade Russia through the Caucus, before Hitler turned on them?
And Putin wants the USSR back together. Is that for a buffer against real democracy? The Russian people could be so much more if they could just dump his runt ass.
Consider the possibility that you know a lot of things that aren’t true.
So Russia was entitled to total safety and hegemony, and anyone who wanted a little safety from Russia deserves invasion? I hope you don’t treat women like that. But it explains why they chose the bear.
Ukraine and Russia got along fine before the American sponsored coup.
Puppet states do that.
Like the Europeons
Ukraine wasn’t a puppet then.
It is now.
It was russias puppet
And the west /used/ and continues /using/ Ukraine solely to bleed Russia, regardless of cost to Ukrainians.
If the west gave a fucking shit about actual fucking Ukrainians, the west would not have chosen this path.
The west does not give a fucking shit about human rights. JFC. Have you been paying attention?
Stop repeating the war mongers talking points.
bingo. we have a winner. this evil empire we inhabit is crumbling. history certainly rhymes. an old tale in the book of human history.
Hardly. If Ukraine had an agency then, it does not now.
Holy shit! Another idiot!
I don’t think they like him…
They have no more reason to trust Trump than Putin or anyone else does, allies or enemies. Seriously, day by day it comes down to, what side of bed did he get up from?