RUSH: Let’s get to Korea. This is too juicy. This is just too juicy as to what’s going on. Now, folks, I don’t want to diminish it. I’m not trying to suggest that it is not important because it clearly is. But you should know that members of the Trump administration are not buying into this yet, and Trump is still saying that he’s gonna be prepared to walk out if he thinks anything about this is not on the up and up. It is historic. This is the first North Korean, communist, potbellied dictator to actually walk across the border into South Korea.
The South Koreans have gone north since 1954, but the North Koreans have never come south. They’ve never crossed the DMZ. Kim Jong-un did. Believe me, he wants to eat, and they’re running out of that in North Korea. They’re probably running out of Johnnie Walker Blue Label in North Korea as well. You gotta go to the south to get it. We’ve seen the pictures of the South Korean president smiling and hugging with Kim Jong-un — and, by the way, the image remake on Kim Jong-un is well underway.
On Twitter you can find, “This guy’s so cute! This is so cute! We love this guy!” supposedly from South Koreans. “He’s so cute. Man, this guy could do stand-up, this guy’s so funny.” It’s amazing how mass murderers get romanticized by the American left. At any rate, everybody’s saying, “What happened here? Why all of a sudden…?” I mean, just months ago this guy’s threatening to launch a nuclear missile and hit California.
And then Trump starts calling him rocket man and Trump starts saying, “We’re not gonna put up with this. You’d better think twice about this.” He sent Pompeo over there to talk with him, secret meeting, and all of a sudden Kim Jong-un… They’re having a peace summit today. It probably already happened ’cause they’re 12, 14 hours ahead of us over there. It’s 1:30 in the morning or 2:30 there. It’s in that ballpark. They may be 10 hours ahead. I’m not sure.
I could find it in a jiffy if I wanted to waste time and call it up on my world clock. But for the most part… I mean, Kim Jong-un may not be in bed because everybody knows he’s a big playboy and they don’t have any nightclubs in North Korea. So that’s another reason he crossed the DMZ and went south. He loves those disco lights. But seriously, what changed? Well, it’s been reported out there in the South China Morning Post, which is good paper. I read that once when I was in Hong Kong years and years ago. Rupert Murdoch owns it.
And the Washington Post has also got a brief little story about what’s really going on. And as a prelude to that we have CNN story: “South Korea Credits Trump for Talks with the North.” You know how it had to hurt CNN to write that headline on their website? I can’t wait ’til they have to report “Trump Wins Nobel Prize.” You think if it’s verified that the Norks have parked their nukes, that Trump would get the Nobel Peace Prize? Don’t think it’s gonna happen.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It’s 2:37, so they’re 13 hours ahead. It’s 2:37 Saturday in South Korea. So the clubs are just getting going in many areas. I’m guessing that’s where you’ll find Kim Jong-un with his security detail, which is eating raw corn ’cause that’s all they’ve got. So, anyway, back to North Korea here and CNN. Somebody named Kang Kyung-wha in South Korea “told CNN that [Trump] had played a significant role in bringing the two sides together. ‘Clearly, credit goes to President Trump,’ Kang told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in Seoul.
“‘He’s been determined to come to grips with this from day one.’ … President Trump’s rhetoric, of course, has shifted on North Korea as a summit became a more real possibility. In August, [Trump] threatened ‘fire and fury like the world has never seen.’ In September, he said ‘Rocket Man is on a suicide mission.’ This week, he said that Kim Jong-un had been ‘very open and I think very honorable.'” I predicted this. I told you way back. Everybody didn’t know what Trump was doing by calling him rocket man.
I said, “Trump knows the guy’s insane and so Trump’s dealing with him as a fellow insane leader.” He knows the only thing that Kim Jong-un’s gonna react to is a fellow — another — insane leader, and it worked! So Trump goes what appears to be insane on Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un thinks he owns insane, so here comes Trump. You know what Kim Jong-un did? He called people in Washington seeking advice on how to deal with the guy. Trump has played this masterfully, there’s no question about it, but there are other reasons why this happened — and they involve nuclear testing.
The nub of this is that Kim Jong-un’s nuclear testing has destroyed a couple of mountains where the testing was taking place, and one of the mountains was like a volcano. A hole was created in the top and radiation may be seeping out of it, and it’s near the border with China, and the ChiComs are livid at Kim Jong-un and essentially they’ve said, “What the hell are you doing? You shut this down right now,” because literally they’re destroying mountains. Their nuclear testing has put the geography of certain areas of North Korea in grave danger.
“According to two studies…” It’s the ChiComs that have made these studies public. This is a fascinating thing here, folks, because everybody says, “This is an about-face like we haven’t seen.” I mean, one day Kim Jong-un’s threatening destruction and literally the next week he’s suing for peace. “According to two studies authored by [ChiCom] scientists and reported by the Wall Street Journal,” which means the ChiComs had to release this data, “the North Korean nuclear weapons have been too effective.”
Let me give you an excerpt. “A large part of North Korea’s underground nuclear test facility, which leader Kim Jong Un pledged to close, is unusable anyway due to the collapse of a cavity inside the mountain after the last [nuclear test] there, Chinese scientists say. Seismologists involved in a soon-to-be-published study also warned that another [test] in the same spot and with similar yield could cause ‘environmental catastrophe,”‘ throughout the region not just in North Korea.
“Soon after the sixth and largest blast last September, satellite images suggested that one part of the site, a 7,200-foot granite peak called Mount Mantap” I’m not making that up “had diminished in height. Some U.S. and South Korean experts suggested that tunnels inside the mountain…” Which you would need the tunnels to move the missiles into place. You have to have, you know, pathways to get all the equipment in place to do the test. “[E]xperts suggested that tunnels … had collapsed, rendering much of the site useless.
“Now, the two [ChiCom] studies give credence to that theory. They both used data from seismic monitoring stations in China and abroad to analyze the initial 6.3-magnitude tremor caused by the” last test. There was a tremor, aftershock, after that last test, 6.3 magnitude. There’s another one 8-1/2 minutes later that was almost like another test that nobody knew was coming. That’s how much damage Kim Jong-un is doing to his own mountain. His own test mountain has collapsed on his missiles!
His own test mountain has collapsed and a giant hole is now on the top of the mountain where it is feared radiation is seeking seeping through like it would be from a volcano. The blast in September was the last conducted at this particular mountain, although there seems to be some debate over whether it remains functional, but a lot of people think that it isn’t. And if all this has happened — and, again, the South China Morning Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post say because the ChiComs have released their seismology, their study, the ChiComs want…
Now, it could be trickery. They may be lying to us. The mountain hasn’t been destroyed and Kim Jong-un’s not sun-setting anything, and this is a giant, fake meeting. Kim Jong-un’s nukes are still gonna be valid. But the best thinking on this is that the ChiComs are fit to be tied over what this guy has done, exposing that whole region to nuclear radiation and that they have ordered him to shut this down.
“‘The test was not only destabilising the site but increasing the risk of eruption of the Changbai Mountain,’ a large, active volcano at [ChiCom]-Korean border…” If that’s true, now and then there is no doubt that Xi Jinping, the head ChiCom leader, has made it perfectly clear to Kim Jong-un, “If you continue to want to swallow Johnnie Walker Blue, then you’re gonna shut this crap down right now. We’re not gonna let you and your incompetence kill us.”
Now, if all that’s true, if Kim Jong-un has basically destroyed the mountain (laughing) in which he was conducting his nuclear tests, he’s got no choice. He can’t launch. He can’t test. He can’t develop. It would take billions and billions of dollars to develop a new test site, and the North Koreans do not have billions and billions of anything except hungry people.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Lindsey Grahamnesty was on Fox & Friends this morning. Ainsley Earhardt… By the way, Ainsley has a new book, My Inner Light or The Light of My Light. I forget what it is. But she went back to her alma mater today. She was in South Carolina on the road and she was doing interviews. Give me the name of the book. I can’t… It’s something about light. “Light” is in the title. Light Up My Light? Light of My Light? Something. I Am Light. Anyway… The Light We See It Is! My Light…
The Light within Me is the title of Ainsley’s new book, and she was talking today with Lindsey Grahamnesty, who’s also from South Carolina, about the reports of an agreement between North and South Korea to end the Korean War, and Ainsley Earhardt said, “You saw the images, leaders of North and South Korea today, you saw the news. Is this really gonna end the war?”
GRAHAM: Here’s the deal. It wouldn’t have happened without Trump. Donald Trump convinced North Korea and China he was serious about bringing about change. We’re not there yet. But if this happens, President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. A word of warning: The worst thing Kim Jong-un could do is play Trump, to go through all these motions and go back to the old way of doing business. Donald Trump will not tolerate being played. We’re either gonna have peace or gonna have a war now, because Kim Jong-un has made a mistake if he’s not serious and is playing Trump.
RUSH: Yeah. Now, there’s a lot going on here. I told you about the likely destruction of the test mountains. I know it sounds funny, because it’s that little cherubic, disco-loving, pot-bellied dictator that’s done it, but the guy is a deadly tyrant who looks like a Cabbage Patch doll that you would picked up at Walmart back in the seventies, if there had been a Walmart. I think there was. But the truth is the guy is a vicious, bloody murderer, as his whole family has been.
The ChiComs have released news that the test mountains used for six underground nuclear tests have been destroyed and that the tunnels built into the mountain so they could move material and the test devices through have collapsed. And so the facilities for testing nukes have been destroyed. And one of the mountains is on the ChiCom-North Korean border where there might be some radiation leakage, in which case the ChiComs would have read this guy the Riot Act. And somebody sent me an email.
“Rush, why wouldn’t the ChiComs take credit. Why would they let Trump get credit if it was the ChiComs that actually told this guy to stand down?” ‘Cause I don’t think it’s just that. I think there’s a whole lot of other stuff that’s happened that Kim Jong-un noticed, and I am holding those things here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. The first is a story from the Washington Free Beacon today. The headline: “Mattis on Russian Mercenaries in Syria: I Ordered Their Annihilation.”
So it could well be that one of the reasons Kim Jong-un came to the table… By the way, remember… Somebody sent me a note. “How come every one of these guys is named Kim?” I said, “Because Kim is the last name. They pronounce the last name first in China — in North Korea.” So in the way we pronounce names his name is actually Jong-un Kim, and his father was Il-sung Kim, but they pronounce the last name, the family name first. So Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un. That’s why they’re all Kims.
They all are Kims. It’s the last name.
But you remember that Kim Jong-un was bragging as recently as January about his button, about his nuclear button? He said, “The whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike and a nuclear button is always on the desk of my office.” Remember how Trump replied to that? “I got a button, too, and my button’s bigger than yours.” I don’t think we should ignore the results of a little-reported battle in Syria a month later, February 7th and February 8th, in which the Russian mercenaries were wiped off the face of the earth by U.S. forces.
“There were reports at the time that Russian mercenaries were absolutely stunned and overwhelmed by the ferocity of the Americans.” It was Newsweek, February 23rd. “They Beat Our A–es Like We Were Little Pieces of S—.” It’s a Newsweek story. The Free Beacon today, “Mattis on Russian Mercenaries in Syria: I Ordered Their Annihilation — Secretary of Defense James Mattis explained Thursday why he directed a strike that reportedly killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria back in February.
“Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. has a deconfliction line with Russia to ensure that the two countries can communicate in order to avoid direct conflict with one another in Syria. He said that a group of ‘irregular forces’ were in conflict with U.S. forces, and once it was ascertained that those forces were not Russian regulars,” i.e., they were mercenaries, “Mattis directed a counterattack. ‘The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated,’ Mattis said. ‘And it was.'”
This back in February.
This is right after Kim Jong-un’s been bragging about his nuclear button, and I think it is a relevant event in terms of timing, that Kim Jong-un saw what American forces are capable of and that the Russians stood aside because these were theoretically not Russian regulars. They were Russian mercenaries. So there is that to add to this. But here’s the bottom line. The bottom line is that we have had I don’t know how many presidents deal with Korea since the late 1950s and not a single thing changed except the North Koreans became more dangerous.
The North Koreans continue to get more dangerous, and the United States often provided them the materiel to do so. The Clinton administration was famous for making deals with the North Koreans that would allow them to build up their electrical grid with nuclear power in exchange for standing down developing nuclear weapons. Except they never stood down. We had Madeleine Albright go over there during the Clinton years and come back and brag about all the achievements that had been made and all the accomplishments that had been made.
And the only thing that happened was that the Norks kept getting more powerful and stronger, leading Kim Jong-un to start testing his missiles and threatening to hit the continental U.S. Donald Trump gets elected and immediately starts talking to these people like they haven’t been talked to before, threatening them like they haven’t been threatened before, promising that great damage is gonna occur to them if they don’t stop it like they’ve never been promised before. And inside…
It’s not even a year and a half Trump’s in office, and today Kim Jong-un (or yesterday) walks across the Demilitarized Zone, and everybody’s got a story saying the Korean War is over and that the North Koreans are denuclearizing. There isn’t a single president that’s even tried for this, because our State Department doesn’t believe things like this are possible! “You can’t accomplish things like this with diplomacy,” they say, “and going to war is too dangerous. It’s too risky,” and so maintenance of the status quo is the objective.
And wherever you look, it’s maintenance of the status quo in the Middle East, maintenance of the status quo in Central America, maintenance of the status quo with illegal immigration, maintenance of… Not fixing anything, including the U.S. economy. Donald Trump comes in as an outsider and doesn’t know this way of thinking. “What do you mean? Why run for office, why become president if all you’re gonna do is make sure things don’t change? What’s the point of that?” Things are changing, and things are changing “bigly,” as they say — “yugely,” as they say.
And I’m telling you, the Comeys and the Muellers and all these other people, in my vision, they’re beginning to look really small. I know they think they’re huge. I know they think they are giants. I know the Never Trumpers think that they are intellectual masterminds and giants — I’m telling you — and they think Trump is just this blithering idiot who’s stumbling into good fortune and doesn’t even know why it’s happened. But look how phony that world is. Barack Obama gets a Nobel Peace Prize on the come?
Barack Obama gets a Nobel Peace Prize because he’s the first African-American elected president? Barack Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize ’cause he’s a good liberal and supposedly doesn’t like violence? And yet gets the country in more wars than George Bush and George Bush and Bill Clinton combined, and he’s getting the Nobel Peace Prize when he hasn’t done anything but be president for a couple of months? How phony a world is that? How utterly, totally phony and flimsy is a world like that? Had it been me, I would have been embarrassed.
I would have told the Nobel people, “I don’t deserve this or any other award anybody wants to give me right now. This is a joke.” But not Obama. Oh, no! Obama puts that serious, arrogant look on, puffs out his chest, walks over there and accepts the award like he’s actually done something simply because he’s alive. What arrogance. You don’t have that with Trump, and yet that’s what everybody thinks he is. They think he’s an out-of-control, bumbling fool that’s going to get us all into trouble, wrecking this and wrecking that, and all he’s doing is fixing a bunch of things.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want you to hear Angela Merkel and her reaction to Trump and the meeting that’s coming up in North Korea.
MERKEL: (via translator) Today we meet at a point in time where it has become very clear that the strength of the American president, where he really saw to it that the sanctions against North Korea are abided by, are respected, has opened new possibilities, opened new ways. This first meeting between Kim Jong-un and the South Korean president, Moon, is a first step on a road that will hopefully lead into a better future. We Germans know only two well what it means after years of separation, after years of division, to have these first contacts.
RUSH: She’s talking about the Berlin Wall. She is comparing Trump bringing the two Koreas together to Reagan taking down the Berlin Wall, specifically referring to the strength of the American president.
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RUSH: This is kind of funny. Fox News is doing the story now on Kim Jong-un blowing up his mountain and that being the reason for his denuclearization. He can no longer conduct tests. The source for that information, by the way, is a couple of research papers done by ChiCom scientists released by the ChiCom government — which, if true, makes it especially interesting. That means the ChiComs had something to do with this. And who was it? Trump thanked the ChiComs. Trump thanked China for their role in Kim Jong-un waddling across the demilitarized zone to meet the South Koreans.