John Kelly manipulated Trump to become friends with Kim Jong Un to prevent all-out war: book
New York Times correspondent Michael Schmidt is publishing a paper back copy of his book, Donald Trump v. The United States, that will feature a 12,000-word addition that includes new information he discovered after publication about the relationship the former president had with Gen. John Kelly.
Kelly, who served as Trump's second chief of staff, became increasingly concerned about the rhetoric that Trump was using publicly and in private to taunt North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Coming into the position, Kelly was shocked to learn that Trump was completely unmoved by the chance of thousands of people dying if Kim decided to bomb something.
"When Kelly said ‘this could destroy the economy’ he thought it was something that might appeal to Trump’s love of his own economy. Trump didn’t appreciate that," Schmidt told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace. "It was only after Kelly suggested to Trump ‘why don’t you become his friend? No one in history has ever done that.’ He knew it would never lead to a denuclearized North Korea but it would ratchet back the public and private rhetoric that was spinning out of control."
It's exactly what Trump did and it's how America was saved from going to war with North Korea over the egos of the two leaders.
"It's the indifference to death that I've never seen so starkly," she said. "We knew that Trump had an indifference to suffering in the spiked wall he wanted at the southern border and the nukes he wanted to shoot into Mexico. But the indifference in your telling of Kelly's efforts to educate him on the horrors and the heinous nature of war feels like an inflection point for Kelly."
Schmidt agreed, saying that no person understood the horrors of war more than Kelly, particularly when he lost his son in the post-9/11 wars.
"And he's trying to explain to Trump what this could look like, what a DMZ with North and South Korea firing on each other could look like. How this could all spin into ways that could lead to missiles flying all over the place," said Schmidt. "And it didn't work to connect to Trump. He couldn't connect to Trump that way. It was only through Kelly, saying to Trump, 'You can be the deal maker. Go all the way back to Eisenhower. No one has done this. You can do this.' And Trump goes along with it."
It explains the about-face that the public saw between Trump and Kim from taunting each other on Twitter to writing "love letters."
See the interview below or at the link here.
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