NONTRUTHS/NORTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The president drew on the stories of two victims of North Korean cruelty: an American college student, Otto F. Warmbier, who fell into an irreversible coma while in detention in Pyongyang, the capital, and later died; and a North Korean man who lost his leg while searching for food for his starving family. He later defected…
The defector, Ji Seong-ho, was also in the gallery and held up his wooden crutches in triumph when Mr. Trump hailed him.
Hours before the speech, the president’s Korea policy was buffeted by the administration’s decision to abandon a long-delayed plan to nominate a prominent Korea scholar, Victor D. Cha, as its ambassador to Seoul…
Officials in Seoul had already signed off on the ambassadorship; Mr. Cha is a Republican who identifies as a hawk on North Korea. But friends said he told Pentagon and other administration officials his concerns about ordering a pre-emptive, or preventive, military strike on North Korea before it had the capacity to fire a nuclear-armed missile at the United States…
The White House declined to comment Tuesday on the reasons for its decision, though a senior official played down policy disagreements as the cause. The administration had not formally submitted Mr. Cha’s name to the Senate, even after he had undergone months of vetting.”
-Mark Landler, “Trump Vows a Muscular America to Confront a World of Enemies,” The New York Times online, Jan. 30, 2018