The 'dotard' meets 'Little Rocket Man': Trump and Kim are adversaries with many similarities
By Philip Rucker
June 10 at 7:20 AM
SINGAPORE — One is a septuagenarian American president, the other a millennial North Korean dictator. But each has nuclear weapons and mixes taunts and tributes to keep the other off balance. Thin-skinned alphas, both men are wedded to a go-it-alone leadership style, have a penchant for bombast and are determined to project dominance when they finally meet.
As President Trump prepares for his summit here Tuesday with Kim Jong Un, he sees some of himself in the authoritarian North Korean: an unorthodox and sometimes feared figure who distrusts the established world order and has a thirst to make history.
Publicly, Trump has labeled Kim “Little Rocket Man” and in private with aides has called him “a crazy guy.” Kim, in turn, has called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” a word suggesting senility.
Yet advisers say Trump considers Kim a rational actor, and the president has flattered the dictator recently with gratuitous praise. Trump is confident he can negotiate the terms of a deal such that each man can walk away, despite his maximalist demands, with what he wants: for Trump, a promise of peace and denuclearization; for Kim, global legitimacy and prosperity.
“This a leader who really is an unknown personality,” Trump said of Kim on Saturday, as he departed Canada en route to Singapore. “People don’t know much about him. I think that he’s going to surprise on the upside, very much on the upside. We’ll see.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-dotard-meets-little-rocket-man-trump-and-kim-are-adversaries-with-many-similarities/2018/06/09/583b9ddc-6a89-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html
