“She [Kamala Harris] won’t be sending love letters to dictators.”But we do know, though I suppose it is TRUE that Trump did not, as far as we know, declare his love precisely. For example:
—Former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton
There is no evidence that Trump sent such letters. Clinton is making a bit of a leap to suggest that Trump has written “love letters” to dictators.
Clinton appears to be referring to a 2018 comment from Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: “We fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
That’s certainly an unusual statement, but he’s referring to letters written by Kim. We do not know what Trump wrote to Kim — or other dictators, for that matter.
Former national security adviser John Bolton, in his tell-all memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” described one of Kim’s letters as “pure puffery, written probably by some clerk in North Korea’s agitprop bureau, but Trump loved it.” After another such letter, Trump even mused that he wanted to invite Kim to the White House — what Bolton called a “potential disaster of enormous magnitude.”
On Jan. 18, 2019, after a ranking North Korean envoy visited Washington to discuss the upcoming second summit in Hanoi, Trump wrote a brief note to Kim: “A great meeting and message. I will see you soon.” Incredibly, Trump closes with “Your friend.” Trump’s next note, on Feb. 19, just days before the Hanoi meeting, is even less formal or serious. Written entirely by hand, it says, “I look forward to seeing you next week. It will be great. Best wishes.”
Kessler: WE DO NOT HAVE EVIDENCE OF A LETTER FROM TRUMP IN WHICH HE WRITES "I LOVE YOU" 87000 PINOCCHIOS
Maybe read your own newspaper, Kessler.
One of the worst developments of "fact check journalism" was the war on metaphor, demanding hyperliteral adherence to arbitrary dictionary definitions. Trump's repeated praise of Kim for years qualifies as "love letters."
If Trump hadn't spent years boasting about this stuff in those terms then I wouldn't approve of criticizing what could be reasonably seen as diplomatic exchanges with a difficult person, but he did! Constantly!
