Donald Trump gets ahead of the facts on North Korea denuclearization
April 23, 2018 by admin
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President Donald Trump fired off a frustrated tweet about North Korea after a Sunday political news show.
“Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake News NBC just stated that we have given up so much in our negotiations with North Korea, and they have given up nothing. Wow, we haven’t given up anything and they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, and no more testing!
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake News NBC just stated that we have given up so much in our negotiations with North Korea, and they have given up nothing. Wow, we haven’t given up anything they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, no more testing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2018
NBC Meet the Press host Todd drew Trump’s ire for saying that a more positive tone for negotiations was in the air, but not more than that.
“We don’t have a release of any of those Americans that they’ve held captive,” Todd said April 22. “We don’t have a pledge of denuclearization as the ultimate goal.”
Trump’s tweet insisted that North Korea indeed had agreed to denuclearization, so we looked at the record. In terms of what North Korea itself has said, Trump has gotten ahead of events.
North Korea announced April 20 that it would shut down its northern nuclear test site. A translation of a broadcast from North Korea’s state news agency said North Korean President Kim Jong Un unveiled the decision at a Workers’ Party Central Committee meeting.
“The northern nuclear test ground of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will be dismantled to transparently guarantee the discontinuance of the nuclear test,” the newscaster said.
Kim also reiterated the promise to conduct no weapon or missile tests while talks were under way. He added that tests were no longer needed because the country had met its goal of developing its weapons capability.
So far, North Korea has yet to officially commit to scrapping its nuclear program. It has left it to other countries to put that possibility on the table.
Most recently, South Korean President Moon Jae-in told dozens of South Korean media executives April 20 that North Korea was “expressing its commitment to complete denuclearization.”
Moon said North Korea is not demanding the withdrawal of American troops from bases in South Korea. That would be a significant shift, but as the Korean newspaper Dong-a Ilbo reported along with Moon’s comments, “there is still a considerable gap between Washington’s demand of the North’s denuclearization in a minimum period of time and Pyongyang’s calls for progressive and synchronous measures for denuclearization.”
Denuclearization has been in the air since Kim made a rare trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The official Chinese news service Xinhua reported March 28 that Kim said, “It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula.”
Trump also tweeted about his Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo’s meeting with Kim.
“Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un in North Korea last week, Trump tweeted April 18. “Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed. Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”
So, no direct statements from North Korea on denuclearization, but the word has been in play and not refuted by North Korea.
The White House pointed to an opinion piece in the Washington Times as support for Trump’s latest statement.
The April 19 headline said, “North Korea agrees to ‘complete denuclearization,’ says South.”
That op-ed cited an NBC News report that had the headline, “North Korea willing to accept ‘complete denuclearization’ without conditions, Moon says.”
The NBC News post repeated a Reuters report from April 19 that said, “South Korea’s Moon says North seeking ‘complete denuclearization’.”
In the nuances of diplomacy, the transition from “seeking” to “agrees to” is a big deal.
“North Korea has agreed to talk about it (denuclearization), not to do it,” said Frank Jannuzi, president of the Mansfield Foundation, a group that funds work on U.S.-Asian policy.
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton sounded unimpressed with what North Korea has promised so far, even with the closure of its test site.
“I think this announcement on Friday is better than continued testing, but it’s not much better than that,” Cotton said on CBS’s Face the Nation April 22. ”It’s an easily reversible decision, and they made no announcement about their medium- or short- range ballistic missiles that threaten hundreds of thousands of Americans in Korea and Japan just like it threatens our allies there.”
South Korean skeptics of the North’s intentions have noted that denuclearization has been central in previous high-level negotiations without producing tangible results.
Jannuzi said North Korea often speaks of denuclearization as the dying wish of Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung.
“They always said he wanted that the peninsula be denuclearized,” Jannuzi said. “All we have from the North right now is basically what’s always been there.”
Trump said that North Korea had agreed to denuclearization. While North Korea has promised to halt testing and close a weapons test site, it has not officially said that it is committed to denuclearization.
Other leaders have made that statement on their behalf, and even in that case, the only promise is that they are willing to talk about reaching that point. That is not the same as agreeing to do it.
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James Shaw Jr. on why he rushed the Waffle House shooter: ‘He was going to have to work to kill me’
April 23, 2018 by admin
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April 22, 2018 at 9:37 PM
Moments before the first shot, James Shaw Jr. was watching a Waffle House employee wash dishes, stacking them higher and higher. When the first shot was fired, Shaw thought the tower of plates had come crashing down, he would later recount at a news conference. At 3:25 a.m. Sunday, police cars stormed toward the restaurant in the Nashville neighborhood of Antioch.
Shaw, 29, had gone to a club with his best friend Saturday night. Afterward, the two went to a Waffle House on Bell Road, but it was crowded, so they drove to the one at 3571 Murfreesboro Pike.
The Metro Nashville Police Department said that the suspect, Travis Reinking, arrived in the Waffle House parking lot at 3:19 a.m. Sunday and sat in his pickup truck for about four minutes staring at the customers inside. Then he got out, wearing only a green jacket and carrying a AR-15 rifle, and fatally shot two people outside the Waffle House, police said. He then went into the restaurant and continued shooting, they said. Two more people would die. The suspect, feared to be armed and wanted for murder, has not been found.
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[Waffle House shooting: Authorities seized suspect’s AR-15 after arrest at White House last year]
At the news conference Sunday afternoon, Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron said that as the gunman was shooting, “a patron of the restaurant, James Shaw Jr., ran to the restroom area of the Waffle House, saw that the shooting had stopped, and saw an opportunity to intervene. Mr. Shaw wrestled the rifle away from Reinking and tossed it into another part of the restaurant to end the gunfire. Mr. Shaw saved, obviously, many lives in his heroic action.”
After the third gunshot, the window burst, Shaw said, and Waffle House employees scattered. Looking back, he saw someone lying on the ground at the door. He jumped toward the restroom, he would later tell the Tennessean newspaper, and stood behind a swivel door, where a bullet grazed his arm.
That’s when Shaw decided to act.
“I kind of made up my mind, because there was no way to lock that door, that if it was going to come down to it, he was going to have to work to kill me,” he said.
When he heard the shooting stop, he rushed out.
Shaw, who works for ATT;, said the shooter was either reloading the gun or the firearm had jammed, and he wrestled it away and threw it over the counter. Still fearing for his life, Shaw said he rushed toward the front door of the restaurant, pushing the shooter out also.
The gunman then left, Shaw said.
Police said the suspect took off his jacket less than a block from the restaurant. Two magazines were found in the pockets.
“He clearly came armed with a lot of firepower intended to devastate the south Nashville area,” Aaron said.
Shaw went back to see if his friend was alive. “It was so fast,” Shaw said. “I hope nobody has to be in those shoes again. It was almost light-switch-type fast.”
It was only when he was in ambulance, when a paramedic asked him about himself, that he remembered his 4-year-old daughter.
According to the Tennessean, he was taken to TriStar Southern Hills Medical Center about 4 a.m., where he was treated for minor injures and then released at 7:30 a.m. A girl at the hospital told him that “you saved my life,” he told the newspaper.
Nearly 12 hours after the shooting, Shaw spoke at a news conference where Nashville Mayor David Briley and others thanked him. Walt Ehmer, the president and chief executive of Waffle House, said he wanted to personally thank Shaw.
“You don’t get to meet many heroes in life, Mr. Shaw, but you are a hero, you are my hero,” Ehmer said at the news conference. “I’ve talked to some of those people you saved today, and they will think of you for the rest of their days, as will I. We’re forever in your debt.”
Shaw rejected this description of his actions.
“I want people to know that I did that completely out of a selfish act,” he said. “I was completely doing it just to save myself.”
“I’m not a hero. I’m just a regular person, and I think anybody could have did what I did if they are just pushed into that kind of cage,” Shaw said as he became emotional. “You have to either react or you’re going to fold, and I chose to react because I didn’t see any other way of living, and that’s all I wanted to do. I just wanted to live.”
After leaving the hospital, Shaw went home, changed his clothes, and then attended church with his family about 10:30 a.m., according to the Tennessean.
When asked about it later, he said he wasn’t particularly religious. He went to church to get past the shooting, he said.
“I don’t want this to be the focal point of my life,” he said. “I don’t want this to be a major moment in my life.”
Kristine Phillips contributed to this report.
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