April 22, 2018

It’s Sunday Morning So Trump Is Tweet-Yelling at His TV Again. This Time About North Korea.

“Sleepy Eyes” is back.

Yomiuri Shimbun via AP

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Donald Trump is at his Florida resort today, with the television tuned into “Fake News NBC”, where anchor Chuck Todd was previewing his show, Meet the Press.

“There’s not many preconditions the United States is asking for so far in this potential summit,” Todd told Hallie Jackson, about the Trump administration’s planning around talks with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the coming weeks. “North Koreans have gotten a lot out of it. What has the United States gotten yet?” (Watch the video here.)

Trump had seen enough. Time for Twitter:

One tiny thing: The only thing North Korea has publicly agreed to so far is halting nuclear testing. “From 21 April, North Korea will stop nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles,” North Korea’s state news agency said over the weekend. Kim Jong Un said he will also close the country’s nuclear testing facility at Punggye-ri.

But this isn’t “denuclearization.” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to acknowledge that reality when he offered this assessment of the announcement: “What is crucial here … is how this development is going to lead to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of nuclear arms, weapons of mass destruction and missiles,” he said. “And I will keep a close eye on that.”

Last month, South Korean officials said North Korea had signaled its willingness to negotiate about abandoning its nuclear weapons. “The North expressed its willingness to hold a heartfelt dialogue with the United States on the issues of denuclearization and normalizing relations with the United States,” the South Korean statement said.

Update: He’s still at it:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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