I have to admit. I'm stumped as to what to say about El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago's most excellent walk across the 38th parallel, Tucker Carlson's presence on the trip, or the deadly thermonuclear side-eye dropped on Ivanka Trump by Christine Lagarde at the G-20 in Japan. The rest of the world got to see exactly what we're being asked to re-elect in 2020. I was surprised not to wake up on Monday morning to discover that the Statue of Liberty was wearing a straitjacket.

As to the first, the handshake between these two very unfortunate haircuts was an interestingly bizarre photo-op, but that's all it was. The administration* has responded by softening its position from a denuclearized Korean peninsula to a nuclear freeze by the North Koreans, which they have no intention of giving the president*, either. Kim Jong-un remains the legacy monster he was raised to be by his monster of a father. Carlson offered the most lucid explanation of the sudden affection that the president* has for his chubby little doppelganger. From USA Today:

"On the other hand, you've got to be honest about what it means to lead a country. It means killing people," Carlson continued. "Not on the scale the North Koreans do, but a lot of countries commit atrocities, including a number that we are closely allied with."

Not entirely inaccurate in that the United States has made common cause with horrible people, but that "not on the scale of North Korea" covers a multitude of sins. This is a regime that killed a guy with an anti-aircraft gun and that killed another guy by spraying VX in a crowded area of a crowded airport. This is a regime that is currently unresponsive to a massive famine, via The New York Times:

The report followed a joint announcement from two United Nations relief agencies this month that about 10 million North Koreans, or 40 percent of the population, were facing “severe food shortages” after the country had its worst harvest in a decade last fall. The two groups, the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization, warned that North Korea’s early season crops like wheat and barley, which will be harvested next month, were likely to suffer from “widespread low rainfall and lack of snow cover, which left crops exposed to freezing temperatures during winter.”

Nobody since the death of Pol Pot has been "on the scale" of North Korea.

Meanwhile, the conspicuous involvement of Ivanka in the trip has caused most of the buzz. The videos are embarrassing. The still photos are stunning. The memes are hilarious. And the threat is very, very real. There is no question that the president* sees Jared and Ivanka as his rightful heirs, and even less question about the fact that they see themselves that way. Best to come to grips with this now before she turns the National Archives into a handbag shop.

But the president* managed to walk over a painted line without tripping over it. So there's that.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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