You’ve got to love/hate politics. It’s the only game in town where depending on who’s doing the talking and what’s happening on that day, up can be down, left can be right, right can be wrong, yesterday’s grace is tomorrow’s sin and facts used to matter, but was way back in the days when real journalism was the rule rather than the exception.

Case-in-point: The Dems’ bald-faced hypocrisy regarding the potential meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Remember when candidate Obama made a big deal about talking with our enemies? I do. Dems loved the prospect when they were hearing it from their own camp. Now that Trump wants to do it though, they think it’s terrible.

And Obama wasn’t going to insist on concessions from any of these guys as a precondition to having a meeting with them.

Then, remember a year ago, when the Dems were screaming like Chicken Little when Trump matched the Korean dictator’s fiery rhetoric in kind? I do. They were practically predicting a nuclear holocaust.

But, an atomic World War III never happened. We’re still here. However, tragically, Otto Warmbier is not.

Remember him? I bet you do. He was our countryman who the Dem’s press derided when he was sentenced after a North Korean show trial to 15 years of hard labor – for allegedly taking a poster down in a hotel. He was 21.

As you may recall, soon after Otto fell into a coma under mysterious circumstances and the North Korean regime only returned him home when he was just about to die. The Warmbier family reported that the Obama/Clinton State Department had advised them to keep a low profile lest they risk making it more difficult to secure Otto’s return. I wonder though, was that advice really meant to keep the pressure off of the Obama administration because it was too cowardly to stand up for him?

After all, I don’t remember either Obama or Clinton meeting with North Korea to try to get Otto back, although they did apparently have Dennis Rodman ask nicely.

I guess all I can do is ask you to join me in expressing sympathy to the Warmbier family for what their son went through as a political prisoner in a far-away land while many of the publications which should have championed his human rights instead celebrated their violation.

After Otto’s death, President Trump once again stepped up the pressure on North Korea. He reminded Kim Jong Un that he too has a nuclear button, but that his is “bigger” and “it works.”

Once again, the Dems fretted that Trump’s “dangerous” rhetoric would bring us to nuclear war, but once again that simply hasn’t happened. Instead, North Korea is now in nearly-unprecedented talks with South Korea and South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, has publicly thanked President Trump for helping to bring Kim Jong Un to the table. Indeed, the two countries recently fielded one combined Olympic team for the first time since before the Korean War.

And now that Trump’s much tougher approach seems to be working, the Dem’s don’t want him to use positive reinforcement and meet with Kim Jong Un. Apparently, it was good when Obama wanted to meet with such leaders without getting anything in return, but now it’s bad that Trump is scheduling a diplomatic talk after such historic progress. Sometimes though that’s what happens in politics, the only game in town where depending on who’s doing the talking and what’s happening on that day, up becomes down, left becomes right, right becomes wrong, and the facts used to matter back when real journalism was the rule rather than the exception.

Nowadays it seems that torture is only “torture” when the reporters who are writing about it don’t like the people who are doing it. And they’ll usually only cover it when it’s politically advantageous for them to do so. The same human rights which are sacrosanct today are openly mocked tomorrow — as long as we the readers go along with it.

Meanwhile, the simple truth is though that Trump’s approach to North Korea has been working after the Obama/Clinton method failed for 8 years. We’re further away from war with North Korea now than we ever were in the last administration. And I hope we’re closer to getting the Warmbiers some answers as to what happened to Otto — who let’s please remember was their son as well as our countryman and fellow human being.

We attempted to contact the Warmbier family and were not able to reach them prior to publication.

Marty Gottesfeld is an Obama-era political prisoner and Republican Senate candidate against incumbent Elizabeth Warren. You can donate to his legal defense fund at FreeMartyG.com or to his political campaign at VoteMartyG.com.