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The con being played here is, in its own warped way, magnificent:

It’s not just that Trump spent a year threatening war and is now taking credit for war no longer being on the table. It’s more than that: North Korea is no longer even a nuclear threat, full stop. He’s basically claiming that the mere fact of meeting with Donald Trump has mesmerized Kim Jong Un into dismantling his nuclear arsenal.

The reality is that North Korea still has nuclear weapons. They still have ICBMs. They still have centrifuges. They still have testing facilities. And they’ve made no commitments whatsoever—neither explicitly nor in any other way—to so much as slow down their nuke program, let alone abandon it. And yet, their nuclear threat is over. “Sleep well tonight!” Trump says.

Next up: Trump shoots Justin Trudeau on national TV in the Oval Office and declares the Canadian dairy threat over. How will our nation’s news media report it?

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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