Kim: Watch us kill nuke test facility
NORTH KOREA wants the world to watch as it dismantles its nuclear test site.
Pyongyang officials detailed plans Saturday to raze the country’s test site in the lead-up to Kim Jong Un’s summit with President Trump in June.
“A ceremony for dismantling the nuclear test ground is now scheduled between May 23 and 25,” depending on the weather, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Officials said that underground testing tunnels at the site will be collapsed with explosives, and that observation, research and guard facilities will also be destroyed.
Journalists from the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia and Britain will be invited to observe the demolishing.
Kim, in talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in last month, refuted claims by Chinese scientists that parts of facility have become unusable following a collapse at the site.
Secretary of State Pompeo pledged Friday that North Korea can look forward to “a future brimming with peace and prosperity” if it quickly gives up its nuclear weapons.
Pompeo, who returned from Pyongyang this week with three Americans who had been held captive by North Korea, said the detainees’ release helped set conditions for a meeting between Trump and Kim in Singapore on June 12.
South Korean officials, who have acted as intermediaries between Washington and Pyongyang as plans for the Trump-Kim meeting have come together, have said Kim is genuinely interested in dealing away his nuclear weapons in return for the easing of sanctions and other economic benefits.
But doubts linger about whether Kim will ever give up the nukes he likely views as his guarantee of survival.
During their recent summit, Moon and Kim vowed to seek the “complete denuclearization” of the Koreas, but did not refer to verification or timetables. NEW YORK’S other ex-mayor believes Americans are facing an “epidemic of dishonesty” in the nation’s capital that’s a bigger threat to democracy than terrorism or communism.
While Rudy Giuliani has embarked on a recent media blast on behalf of President Trump, former mayor Michael Bloomberg in a commencement speech Saturday at Texas’ Rice University warned of “an endless barrage of lies” and a trend toward “alternate realities.”
The three-term City Hall chief didn’t mention Giuliani or Trump by name.
He instead blamed “extreme partisanship” for the current barrage of dishonesty in politics.
People are more devoted to their political party or tribe than the truth, he said, suggesting the nation is more divided than it has been since the Civil War.
“There is now more tolerance for dishonesty in politics than I have seen in my lifetime,” Bloomberg said. “The only thing more dangerous than dishonest politicians who have no respect for the law is a chorus of enablers who defend their every lie.”
Trump, who consistently labels unflattering stories “fake news,” is known for his shaky relationship with accuracy.
Fact checkers have determined that Trump has made hundreds of false and misleading statements since entering the Oval Office.
Trump’s web of whoppers — particularly those pertaining to the payoff of a porn star alleging an affair — has been muddled even more by the addition of Giuliani to the President’s legal team.
Giuliani, part of the cadre of lawyers representing Trump in the Russian election meddling investigation, revealed Trump reimbursed his personal attorney for a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair.
Trump has denied the affair, and up until recently, any knowledge of the hush money.
Bloomberg called on the public to keep politicians in check.
“The greatest threat to American democracy isn’t communism, jihadism, or any other external force or foreign power,” he continued. “It’s our own willingness to tolerate dishonesty in service of party, and in pursuit of power.”
The 76-year-old billionaire — who mulled an independent White House run in 2016 — evoked a popular myth of the nation’s first President, George Washington, who as a boy said he could not tell a lie when asked if he cut down a cherry tree.
“How did we go from a President who could not tell a lie to politicians who cannot tell the truth?” Bloomberg asked Rice graduates and their families gathered in Houston.
In a slightly more specific jab at Trump, he noted that the vast majority of scientists agree that climate change is real.
Trump and several members of his administration have repeatedly called climate change a hoax.
“If 99% of scientists whose research has been peer-reviewed reach the same general conclusion about a theory, then we ought to accept it as the best available information — even if it’s not a 100% certainty,” Bloomberg said.
He added: “That, graduates, is not a Chinese hoax.”
He warned that such deep levels of dishonesty could enable what he called “criminality.” Asked what specifically he was talking about, Bloomberg noted “lots of investigations” going on, but he declined to be more specific.
Several Trump campaign associates are facing criminal charges as part of a federal probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
Three have already pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI. Federal investigators want to interview Trump himself, although the president’s legal team has resisted so far.
“When elected officials speak as though they are above the truth, they will act as though they are above the law,” Bloomberg noted on Saturday. “And when we tolerate dishonesty, we get criminality. Sometimes, it’s in the form of corruption. Sometimes, it’s abuse of power. And sometimes, it’s both.”