The establishment media have one guiding principle when it comes to dictators and human rights: If the dictator makes Republicans look bad (or Democrats look good), the media do not give a damn about human rights. North Korea is not only the most recent example, it is one of the most striking.

Oh, sure, the list of dictators the media adore is endless — Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Hassan Rouhani, Bashar al-Assad, Mohamed Morsi, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, and the Soviet Union — but when you look at today’s narrative about human rights in North Korea, never let yourself forget that it was only four months ago — a mere 16 weeks — when the media dropped its collective pants and bent over for Kim.

Oh, and never forget that Obama did more to set the cause of human rights back (especially in Iran Libya, and Egypt), and more to spread tyranny (ISIS) than any president in modern history. And the media still love them some Barry.

Remember the media’s reprehensible coverage of the Winter Olympics 16 weeks ago? Remember NBC News spreading Kim’s propaganda at a ski resort? Remember CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, NPR, and Reuters, and others positioning Kim’s monstrous sister as the next Princess Diana?

Kim Jong Un's sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics https://t.co/ian9ZiurVm pic.twitter.com/fBXuFEyXAj — CNN International (@cnni) February 10, 2018

You see, 16 weeks ago, the media still saw Kim as an ally in the war to defeat Trump. (Human rights? What human rights?) Kim’s sister giving Vice President Mike Pence dirty looks at the opening ceremony of the Olympics gave the media vapors and was almost enough to win her a fashion spread in Vogue — something Vogue was more than happy to do for al-Assad’s wife when al-Assad was still admired by the media for making life difficult for former-President George W. Bush (but once al-Assad started to make Obama look bad, Vogue memory-holed the fashion spread).

Yes, it was just 16 weeks ago when the media collectively embraced dictator Kim and his belligerent rockets as political allies in the crusade to expose Trump as a fumbling amateur. And so the media adored, glorified, and gushed over Kim, his Potemkin ski resort, and his Gulag-running sister.

But here we are now, 16 weeks later, and all of a sudden these very same so-called news outlets are screaming about human rights in North Korea.

What changed?

One thing.

One.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with humans or rights.

Over these last 16 weeks, Kim morphed into a genuine threat to the American media’s only objective, which is to defeat Trump in 2020. And so, the media have turned against Kim, but only because Kim broke weak and handed Trump a foreign policy triumph.

Just like Stalin and Castro and Chavez and Saddam and Housani, as long as he furthers the cause of the media’s left-wing agenda here in the states, Kim can imprison and murder all the innocent people he wants. But once he steps off the Dictator Plantation, only then do the media whip out the Human Rights Card. And here is how that card works…

The media are hoping their new-found obsession and narrative about human rights will be the monkey in the wrench, the complication that makes a successful deal between Trump and Kim impossible.

In the media’s depraved worldview, if undercutting Trump results in a nuclear North Korea, in a monster thrust back into isolation where we will have zero chance of affecting his human rights record, so be it. If the media are successful in scuttling a victory for world peace (because it benefits Trump) and results in American going to war with North Korea (which, like Iraq and Saddam, will almost certainly result in more dead civilians than Kim could possibly kill), so be it.

Thankfully, the media’s mercenary manipulations are likely to fail for a number of reasons.

1) Trump just doesn’t care about media pressure. His eye is only on one prize, the only one that matters, ne-nuclearizing North Korea.

2) The American public are no longer swayed by a media that has lost all of its moral authority.

3) The sanctions are still in place against North Korea, and the American people understand this is what matters, not the ceasing of war games that were primarily symbolic.

4) After two decades of America failing to spread “human rights” in the Middle East, after the unfathomable debacle that was Libya, the neocon movement is dead. Oh, sure, it lives on in the Never Trump dead-enders who got nothing else, but after two stupid, endless wars that only made things worse (especially for those we were going to liberate), Americans understand that when we attempt to police faraway lands, the cause for human rights goes nowhere but back.

The bottom line is that the only thing decent people (and those of us who learned the lesson of Iraq) care about is Kim not having an ICMB. If that means keeping this monster in place, that is a price we are willing to pay because history has proven that when we chase the unicorn of human rights, the cost is higher than if we do nothing.

The media also understand this, which is why they are tirelessly working for failure.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.