I am not a career diplomat, nor do I often play one in this shebeen. But I do know two things: a) don't poke North Korea with a stick just to see what will happen, and b) don't piss off an important ally based on something you heard someone say on the Fox News Channel. I believe John Quincy Adams once wrote both these rules down in his diary back in 1819.

Seriously, can't anyone here play this game?

First, we have Rex Tillerson's first foray overseas in which he apparently decided to confront the world's most crazily paranoid regime by feeding its insanity from the top of the menu. From Business Insider:

He even refused to rule out having Japan and South Korea develop their own nuclear weapons in an interview with Fox News. In March 2016, before North Korea's nuclear testing had quite reached the fever pitch it's at today, Trump proposed allowing South Korea and Japan to develop their own nukes to protect themselves. The proposal was widely panned by nuclear-proliferation experts. But Tillerson now stresses that all options are on the table for dealing with North Korea, and that could include more countries building nuclear weapons. "But it's a pure fantasy for Rex Tillerson to demand that North Korea denuclearize before allowing or agreeing to talks" with Pyongyang, Kimball added, also providing a thorough timeline of diplomatic attempts to curb the rogue nation's nuclear program. Tillerson, who traveled to Asia without the customary press corps, has raised many questions over the US's intentions in South Korea but provided few answers.

What does Tillerson—or his boss—imagine will happen if South Korea and Japan muscle up to nukes? Let's ask the Chinese, who already have them. The Chinese also know better than we do how completely nutty the leadership in Pyongyang is so, naturally, the thing to do is to go over there and start mucking around with both feet and hope everybody understands what you're doing better than you do.

Which brings us to the fiasco back in Washington, when Sean Spicer tried to hang the president*'s clumsy attempt to finger his predecessor for wiretapping Trump Tower on British intelligence based on something Fox News dingbat Judge Andrew Napolitano said on television. This, naturally, frosted the British, who have been doing this intelligence thing since before Francis Walsingham went hunting Jesuits. From CNN:

At a Thursday press briefing, Spicer read out allegations originally made on Tuesday on Fox News by legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ -- the equivalent of the US National Security Agency -- had spied on Trump. "Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, 'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ,'" Spicer told journalists. The strong language from Downing Street -- which followed a similar, rare statement from the UK intelligence agency GCHQ -- indicated that the British government was furious that the US had made such an incendiary allegation.

Which prompted this remarkable statement from the rarefied air at the highest level of British spookdom:

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wire tapping' against the then President Elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

Holy hell, is this moronic. Why is Spicer still employed? Melissa McCarthy's career doesn't need that much of a boost.

This is an administration that is putting the country (and the world) in a very difficult position. The only people in it that seem to know what they're doing are the ones that have been put in place to demolish things on purpose. The rest of them demolish things by accident.

Angela Merkel dropped by on Friday to chat with the president*. Run for your life, Angela. We'll get back to you when and if things settle down.

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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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