Singapore, Europe, and the G7 : The Stark Differences Are All in Asia's Favor

SINGAPORE IS THE ONLY NEWS TODAY. And the news is major in ways that the world's politicians and media are not talking about. • Let's put things into a working perspective before we discuss what happened in Singapore in the past two days. If you watched his Singapore press conference, as I did, you saw a Donald Trump who was very positive about the accord and the future. He had a lot of praise for Kim Jong-un, South Korea's President Moon Jae-in, Japan, and Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong -- both Christian Catholics -- as well as for Pompeo & Co. For China, although a bit less lavish in his praise, President Trump spoke of Chinese President Xi Jinping more as his linchpin, calling Xi his good friend, and demanding politely that China step up a little more briskly to the work ahead. President Trump was not kind to Obama or other US Presidents, who, he said, for the last 25 years did nothing to "solve" the North Korea nuclear problem. • What the politicians and media of the world are missing in their analysis of events in Singapore is this -- Trump led a major shift in the US center of interest from Europe to Asia. The Europeans have failed badly with Trump. Poll after poll shows that mainstreet Europeans believe Trump is the biggest threat to world peace. European leaders fight Trump on every policy initiative he introduces. But, while they all hate Trump in one way or another, they stand, hands held out, to receive America's largesse -- in the form of US-paid security for themselves and in the form of continuing trade barriers and tariffs meant to freeze the US out of European markets except on European terms when it suits their pocketbooks and politics. The Canada G7 fiasco and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's antics were just the last chapter in a long unhappy story. Trump is pointing out that Europe and the G7 don't matter so much any more. The "pivot to Asia" that Obama talked big about will happen under Trump. It is the future, economically and strategically. Donald Rumsfeld was right about the Old Europe -- the Europe that supports Trump is eastern Europe...and his foreign policy will be directed at their security. That is why he needs to have a working relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin -- to protect eastern Europe's new democracies that are eager to join in the American Dream and support Trump's vision of western civilization so appropriately expressed in his 2017 Warsaw speech. Trump also could benefit from having Putin as even a weak ally in finishing the job in the Middle East, that is, in suppressing Iran's terrorist dictatorship -- which ultimately is not Russia's ally -- and freeing the Iranina people, while creating secure futures for Israel and Saudi Arabia. • With that in mind, let's look at what's happening in the world today. • • • TO UNDERSTAND SINGAPORE, WE MUST UNDERSTAND THAT TRUMP HAS MOVED ON FROM EUROPE AND THE G7. TheHill's Luis Sanchez wrote on Monday that GOP Senator Bill Cassidy called Trump's spat with Canada "a fight with your spouse." Speaking to CNN, Cassidy said : "Have you ever had a fight with your spouse? And in that you just make the decision, OK things were said that we wish were not but there's an underlying issue that has to be addressed. Now you put this aside and hope it never happens again but you begin to address the issue. I think we as a western alliance need to address the issue.” • The fight with Europe is a lot more serious than Cassidy would have us believe. The facts are slow in coming, mostly because the media is reluctant to report them. But, what actually happened at the G7 was that Trump and the other leaders had agreed to a communique before Trump left for Singapore. Then, after Trump was gone, Trudeau called a domestic Canadian press conference and attacked Trump, saying Canada would not be "bullied" and calling Trump's imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum "insulting and unacceptable." President Trump, as he remarked in his Singapore press conference on Monday, said Trudeau must not realize that there are 20 TVs on Air Force One, because he waited until Trump was on the plane before attacking him. Trump's reaction was swift and frontal : “Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our US farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our US Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the US Market!” Trump tweeted on Saturday. • While Trudeau was ambushing Trump, he was also losing the entire province of Ontario. One day before the G7 summit, the Liberal Party of his friend Kathleen Wynne lost its official party status in an election that gave a 76-seat majority landslide election to Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative party. The same conservative voters fed up with a Liberal Party that raised their hydro bills by 71% will get their chance to vote against Wynne’s friend Trudeau in 2019. • British Prime Minister Theresa May and later German Chancellor Angela Merkel both agreed that the communique had been approved by Trump before he left Canada. Even Trudeau, shortly before Trump's tweet, had announced that all G7 nations had agreed to sign the joint communique. • The New York Post wrote on Sunday that : "President Trump started his day in Singapore on Monday where he blasted the Canadian Prime Minister and slammed NATO just after meeting with the US allies at the G7 in Quebec." Trump tweeted on Monday morning : "Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal....According to a Canada release, they make almost 100 Billion Dollars in Trade with US (guess they were bragging and got caught!). Minimum is 17B. Tax Dairy from us at 270%. Then Justin acts hurt when called out!” President Trump also took aim at NATO for relying too heavily on the US for their security, tweeting : “The US pays close to the entire cost of NATO-protecting many of these same countries that rip us off on Trade (they pay only a fraction of the cost-and laugh!).... The European Union had a $151 Billion Surplus-should pay much more for Military!” • American Thinker's Peter Skurkiss wrote on Monday : "It is likely that the Europeans now know that Trump's 'Make America Great Again' rhetoric is not idle talk. This is a shock for Europe, especially with the G7 meeting coming soon after America's imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs and its withdrawal from the Obama-Iran nuclear deal. It is hard for Europeans to believe that America is willing to depart from the script of the last 70 years." The SCRIPT was "basically that the United States would maintain international order at its own cost and allow its markets to be open to allies without the expectation that their markets would be equally open to American exports." Skurkiss said : "Europe (and others) flourished under such treatment. Their defense expenditures were at bargain basement prices and the door to the massive US market was open wide. America benefited, too, as such a strategy was needed to contain and ultimately defeat the USSR. But the Cold War ended 30 years ago. What was good for the US then is a millstone around America's neck now." • Under the post-WWII arrangement, Europe enjoyed a continuous trade surplus with the US. In 2016 it was $92 billion, of which $65 billion was with Germany alone. The surplus -- that is, the importation into the US of more European products than the import into Europe of US procucts -- has nothing to do with the superiority of European products. After all, says Skurkiss, "America leads the world by a large margin in innovations. No, the trade surpluses were due to tariffs and other barriers Europe has erected to our exports with the tacit approval of the Clinton-Bush-Obama administrations." • The important takeaway from the G7 hassle is that Europe has no desire to create a fair trading relationship with the US because that would mean Europe could not continue its cushy welfare state goodies for its citizens, who are perfectly happy to be offered cozy lives by the US, even as they attack Trump and America as threats to world peace. Trump understands Eruope's game, and he's not accepting it, telling the Europeans that there will be meaningful change or America will walk. • • • NATO. The fair trade issue is the tip of the iceberg. Europeans, Globalists, Progressives -- all willing to be America's allies but only on their own terms -- have had their game Trumped. And, the Eurpean-US relationship will never go back to the post-WWII model. Donald Trump, like the majority of Americans, values work, self-sufficiency, innovation and the future. Europe lives on welfare, personal and national dependence on the US, quashing innovation with mountains of regulations, and pretending they are still in the past. But, this is not the 19th century. It is the 21st century. And, Europe has been defeated by its own vision of itself as the center of the world. That was true before WWI -- but the US saved Europe's bacon twice, in 1917 and 1944. As a consequence, Europe never got over the fact that America was always there in times of crisis, while it drifted far away fom America on issues of trade and foreign policy -- and political fundamentals. Skurkiss says : "Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus. Each has its own interests and worldview....the trade dispute is understandable." Trump said it -- the US will no longer be the piggy bank for the world. Europe is in denial so far, but eventually it will realize that Trump means business. • AND, as for NATO -- who pays and for what? The Obama-Iran nuclear deal is a major bone of contention between Europe and the US. The Iran deal was NEVER in America's best interest, which is undoubtedely why Obama didn't even bother to submit it to Congress for approval. But, for Europe, dealing with Iran was and is a matter of regional commercial prestige and politics. Europe no longer even bothers to pretend that it supports Israel, even though European leaders jawbone about anti-Semitism. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and the US veto for the motion of condemning Israel for the Gaza flair up widened the divide between Europe and the US, and Europe's meager spending on NATO, a chronic problem, has surely raised a question in the Trump administration's highest echelons -- why support a NATO-based European defense capability that will be used to bolster Europe's commercial dealings with Iran at the expense of Israel, a true US ally. • The gap in the self-defense capabilities of Europe and the US are so vast that there is really no starting point for rational discussion. European self-defense preparedness is basically nul. So, Europe appeases -- Hitler, the USSR, the Balkans, Saddam, Syria, Iran's terrorist ayatollahs. Europe huddles behind NATO and the US in the false belief that this amounts to self-defense. • Robert Kagan, in "Of Paradise and Power," gives an analogy to describe the self-defense levels that divide Europe and the US : "A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, inasmuch as the alternative -- hunting the bear armed only with a knife -- is actually riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. The same man with a rifle, however, will make a different calculation of what constitutes a tolerable risk. Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn't have to?....Those who have the ability to solve problems are more likely to attempt fixes than those who lack the skill and capability to do so. The Europeans know but are loath to admit that when danger or a disaster arises, the US is expected to do something about it. This goes not just for confronting rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea but also for natural occurrences like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. America is viewed as the ultimate enforcer of world order. This then raises a logical question. [If] Europe is weak, why don't the Europeans at least support US efforts when trying to address dangers instead of throwing up roadblocks? Part of the answer is pride. Many in Europe remember the glory days when Europe set the pace for the rest of mankind. True, that was centuries ago, but the afterglow remains. Since the European Union cannot participate as an equal partner with the US, they often opt to sit on the sidelines and Monday morning quarterback as a way of claiming superiority. If it sometimes seems as if Europeans are trying to diminish the US and constrain it, that's because they are. This is a symptom of the current mindset throughout Western Europe. It flows from the bitter experience Europe had in the first half of the 20th Century. Because of the horrors of WWI and WWII, things like nationalism, military power, and unilateralism have become an anathema to the European elite. These, however are among the characteristics that also define the US. You see the problem? And if the European grandees honestly studied their history, they'd see that it was military weakness, not strength, that gave Hitler the green light to march and it was brute military strength that stopped him." • Barack Obama -- being a Progressive Globalist -- agreed with the European view and set out to pull America down to their level of passive incapacity for self-defense. Trump is having none of that. Peter Skurkiss sums up the problem : "The US saved Europe in WWI and WWII and again in the Cold War. Since the end of WWII, America is still defending Europe to this very day. The US is also the linchpin for European prosperity by having our markets open to them and by protecting the vital maritime trade routes from all disruptions. And needless to say, the Europeans’ precious EU could never have formed if it weren't for the US presence in Europe. That is what induced the French lamb to lie down with the German wolf. By any objective accounting, American power has been a huge blessing to an often ungrateful Europe. Globalists and those wedded to the past can tout Europe as an American ally all they want, but the fact remains that there are inherent incompatibilities between us and them that will limit the closeness." • • • AND SO WE COME TO SINGAPORE. Then came Trump's Monday morning stinger : “Great to be in Singapore, excitement in the air!” • That is Trump's characterization of Asia -- "excitement in the air." • We said above of Donald Trump that, like the majority of Americans, he values work, self-sufficiency, innovation and the future, while Europe lives on welfare, dependence on the US, quashing innovation with mountains of regulations, and pretending they are in the past. • On the other hand, Asia values work, self-sufficiency, innovation and the future. Europe was saved from WWI and WWII by America, but it learned no lesson except to depend even more on America. Asia was saved from WWII by America and set out to make itself a major partner of the US -- commerically and strategically. Asia succeeded where Europe failed. And, that makes all the difference. Asians are practical-minded risk-takers, like America, like Donald Trump. Japan after WWII and South Korea after the Korean War, were every bit as decimated as Europe after WWII. But, somehow they understood General MacArthur's message of self-help, American support and the drive for a better future. General / Secretary of State Marshall never was able to drive that message home to Europe. • Consider the report of the Singapore meeting by the Miami Herald, not by any means a pro-Trump newspaper : "The gathering of the two unpredictable leaders marked a striking gamble by the American President to grant Kim long-sought recognition on the world stage in hopes of ending the North's nuclear program. Both leaders expressed optimism throughout roughly five hours of talks, with Trump thanking Kim afterward 'for taking the first bold step toward a bright new future for his people.' Kim, for his part, said the leaders had 'decided to leave the past behind' and promised : 'The world will see a major change.' " • Trump took a huge set of risks on in going to Singapore and meeting Kim. But, savvy as he is, Trump wanted the world to understand that Kim was taking risks, too. Trump would not be baited on how long demuclearization will take, but he pointed out that : "once you start the process it means it's pretty much over." The Miami Herald noted : "Between handshakes, a White House invitation, and even an impromptu tour of "The Beast," the famed US presidential limousine known for its high-tech fortifications, Trump sought to build a personal connection with Kim and said they have a "very good" relationship. • President Trump, said the Herald, "brushed off questions about his public embrace of the autocrat whose people have been oppressed for decades. He added that Otto Warmbier, an American who died last year just days after his release from imprisonment in North Korea, 'did not die in vain' because his death brought about the nuclear talks. • It was an emotional moment in President Trump's press conference when he said : "Otto Warmbier is a very special person and he will be for a very long time in my life. His parents are good friends of mine. I think without Otto, this would not have happened. Something happened from that day -- it was a terrible thing, it was brutal, but a lot of people started to focus on what was going on, including North Korea. I really think that Otto is someone who did not die in vain. I told this to his parents: A special young man, and I have to say : Special parents, special people. Otto did not die in vain. He had a lot to do with us being here today." • The Miami Herald wrote that Trump has "appeared unconcerned about the implications of feting an authoritarian leader accused by the US of ordering the public assassination of his half brother with a nerve agent, executing his uncle by firing squad and presiding over a notorious gulag estimated to hold 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners." But, that leader of the brutal regime, said the Herald, finally after 70 years of refusal, agreed to work to repatriate remains of prisoners of war and those missing in action from the Korean War. And, Kim showed many signs of being aware of his place in the historic event. He said many of those watching would think it was a scene from a "science fiction movie." The Miami Herald wrote : "Critics of the summit leapt at the leaders' handshake and the moonlight stroll Kim took Monday night along the glittering Singapore waterfront, saying it was further evidence that Trump was helping legitimize Kim on the world stage." The Herald quoted Michael Kovrig,a northeast Asia specialist at the International Crisis Group in Washington : "It's a huge win for Kim Jong Un, who now -- if nothing else -- has the prestige and propaganda coup of meeting one on one with the President, while armed with a nuclear deterrent." But, said the Herald, Trump responded that he embracing diplomacy with Kim in hopes of "saving as many as 30 million lives." • Why use the Miami Herald's report of the summit -- because its readers are a reflection of a re-emerging America, one that has always welcomed legal immigrants, valued their contributions to the US, and endeavored to meld them into the fabric of America without suppressing their cultural ability to enlarge their adopted country. • • • CHINA'S ROLE. American Thinker's Pat Patterson wrote on Tuesday : "Along with the mud-slinging between Trump and Kim, there was also backroom dealing going on. Trump was, and the media knew, pressuring China to get involved -- basically telling Xi Jinping to get...Kim under control. Why has that fallen on deaf ears and atrophied brains? Trump knew full well what would get China to act : the potential of full-throttle restrictions on Chinese imports to the United States -- cars, phones, televisions, shirts, sandals, and every other cheap wristwatch. The tariffs on steel and aluminum were the warning shot. Are the 'pundits' even able to acknowledge this? Certainly, they understand that even a partial restriction on Chinese imports would disrupt their economy....On every channel, every hour, every pasty buffoon was carping about "would North Korea really give up the nukes?" Dear Lord, save them from themselves. That question was answered after the second visit to China by Kim. Does any sentient being doubt that if China said get rid of the nukes, North Korea would balk? The logic is so simple that I can't believe the 'pundits' are incapable of grasping it....China needs our money to continue building its military. Trump says we'll cut it off if the Chinese don't get North Korea to give up the nukes. China tells the Norks to give up the nukes. The Norks complain about needing protection from the West. China says we got your back and conveys that to Trump -- much the same way we protect Alaska and Hawaii. Got it? What country in its right mind would attack a protectorate of China? None, since the transfer of our missile technology to China under Clinton in the '90s. Long story short : The Trump economy is the driving force in the world today. Everyone wants a piece of this pie. Trump will parlay that power to its maximum effect. China knows it. Merkel knows it. As does eyebrow boy [Trudeau] up north. Trump knows that the Nork missiles are going away. He wouldn't have gone to the summit if he didn't. He also knows we won't be putting any nukes in South Korea or Japan, as a nod to China once North Korea destroys its own. But at that point, who needs them?" • In a slightly more formal article, David Prentice wrote on Tuesday in American Thinker : "Nobody knew. None of us saw it. Amongst his biggest supporters, maybe a handful suspected it. Many of us expected the economic renewal of the US to happen. Many of us foresaw a significant roll back of Saint Barack’s horrid, destructive agenda. A lot of us hoped for a major push back on the left. All of which we have gotten. None of us, no one I have read, no one I know, expected Donald Trump to be a giant in foreign policy. No one expected him to reshape the world. Yet Donald Trump, in a short time, is doing so." • As Prentice points out :"That was supposed to be one of the reasons to vote against him. He had no foreign policy experience. He did not understand the world. He was going to lead us into wars. He would be taken advantage of by our enemies. He would ruin our alliances. He would be a rube. A bumpkin. An embarrassment. That was what we were told. Well. Guess what #nevertrumpers? You were so wrong, desperately wrong. Your shame should be bottomless. Bill Kristol, Max Boot, all of you stand up and please voluntarily go into the stocks and throw rotten veggies at yourselves. You should be ashamed to speak. Yep, the entire left-leaning foreign policy establishment as well. All of you." • Trump is more and more reminding us of the great Ronald Reagan, right down to Reagan's famous "Trust but verify." Talking to reporters on his return trip from Singapore, President Trump said he trusts Kim but the US would have to ensure denuclearization occurs : "We're going to have to check him. And we will check him, we'll check him very strongly. But he has a plan total and complete. He's got a total plan. It will get done." • • • DEAR READERS, the man we Deplorables have trusted and loved from the beginning is making us proud. He has succeeded to have North Korea agree in a signed document to complete denuclearization. NK has destroyed its main nuclear test site, returned three hostages without the plane loads of cash that the Iranians got, and is considering ending the long war with South Korea. Prentice calls it "as consequential an historical event as the coming down of the wall in Berlin and the fall of the Soviet Union. We won’t know for a while. But for the first time in our lifetimes, there is a genuine negotiation to deal with the nuclear nightmare that the North Koreans have brought the world in the past decades....Let me take a hard poke at the leftist crazies who are the mainstream media. When virtually all of them celebrated the demise of the Korean Summit some weeks ago, it was a sad sight to behold. People who should have been yearning for a peaceful solution to the North Korean saga of the last decades decided to cheer when it looked like the summit was off. So-called journalists named Mika, Rachel, Joe, Andrew and Jake, literally every leftist journalist, cheered because the deal appeared to have gone south. No more talk of a Peace Prize, they all cackled. See, we told you Trump was way over his head, didn’t we? Well, when I first read the letter from Trump calling off the summit, it was crystal clear to me, and anyone paying attention, that Trump was negotiating. He knew what he was doing, and he was several moves ahead of everyone else (as usual). ‘Twas obvious as the nose in front of any Democrat operative pretending to be a journalist’s face. Did they not read The Art of the Deal? Do these fake news purveyors never tire of being wrong or losing?" • And, to stray from Singapore, in less than one year, the ISIS caliphate dreams have been shattered and their bases of operation destroyed. Trump is also well on the way to realigning the Middle East by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal that has led most regional nations to choose to ally together against Iran, and with the US. Even Saudi Arabia is a clear ally, and also an ally of Israel. Israel is a stronger ally than ever. The US embassy is in Jerusalem where it belongs.He has effectively signaled to al-Assad and Putin that they will not be able to get away with the things they did so easily under the disastrous Obama administration. And, moving back closer to Singapore, Trump has developed a real relationshipi with the leader of China. David Prentice gets it right : "As Americans, we can be certain Trump will not sell us out. Whether this summit succeeds in actually changing North Korea and denuclearizing the peninsula, we won’t really know for a while. What we do know is no other American leader has succeeded in getting this far. What we do know is that Trump as foreign policy expert will continue to surprise us and the world....We’ve not seen a foreign policy team this good at realigning the word since Reagan." • Sean Hannity has previewed his exclusive interview with President Trump following his return from Singapore. President Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he believes the North Korean leader will begin to work toward dismantling his country’s nuclear program “virtually immediately.” Trump said the process is “really moving rapidly. I just think that we are now we are going to start the process of denuclearization of North Korea, and I believe that he’s going back and will start it virtually immediately -- and he’s already indicated that and you look at what he’s done....His country has to be de-nuked and he understood that, he fully understood that, he didn’t fight it.” The summit, said Hannity, represented a remarkable turnaround from the tension between Washington and Pyongyang last summer when Trump and Kim were in a war of words. But, Trump told Hannity that “without the rhetoric we wouldn’t have been here. So I think the rhetoric, I hated to do it, sometimes I felt foolish doing it, but we had no choice.” • That, dear readers, is the Trump style at work. It not only reflects his pragmatic thinking about how to get the NK deal done; it also reflects the team behind him, advising, warning, agreeing, pushing forward with their President to get to the right conclusion. Mattis, Kelly, Pompeo, Mnuchin on the sanctions side, Pence, the entire White House team -- you know who they are. They are the tough-skinned people who never missed a step under the media and ProgDem attacks that would have wilted many. We can be proud of them and of the man who had the wisdom to bring them together for America and the world. • And, just to remind ourselves that this enormous success has not changed the guy in the red baseball cap -- we don't want him to change -- Trump, the real estate developer, talked to Kim about North Korea’s “great beaches” and suggested ​that Kim Jong-un should tap into his country’s spectacular coastline to boost its economy. Turmp said at the Singapôre press conference : “They have great beaches. You see that whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said, ‘Boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo? Instead of doing that, you could have the best hotels in the world right there​. Think of it from a real estate perspective, you have South Korea, you have China, and they own the land in the middle, how bad is that, right? It’s great​.​” T​rump linked denuclearization with economic gains and showed Kim a video about how he could put his impoverished nation on the path to prosperity if an agreement is reached. Trump added : “I tell you what, he looked at that tape, he looked at that iPad, and I’m telling you they really enjoyed it, I believe." • What is that old saw about being able to take the boy out of real estate, but not real estate out of the boy?? A trusted advisor told me last week that Trump gets along with the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese because they are all practical businesspeople. The deal is the goal and getting there means using what works. I might just add that the Europeans lack dealmaking skills. They can still learn, but it had better be a crash course if they don't want to be left out forever. • And, one last personal note. I, like many, have chafed at Dennis Rodman's "interference" in the NK problem. But, Dennis Rodman, former NBA star and longtime friend of Kim Jong-un who has visited North Korea several times, had the last laugh -- last tears actually. He broke down in tears during a TV interview early Tuesday as President Trump and Kim held their historic meeting. In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo that quickly became emotional, Rodman, wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat, blasted former President Barack Obama for not taking the North Korean leader seriously. Five years ago, Rodman said, Kim told Rodman "certain things" to relay to Obama concerning potential negotiations, but the former President "didn't even give me the time of day -- he just brushed me off, but that didn't deter me." Rodman admitted he was "naive" when he first visited the rogue regime, then started weeping and repeatedly dabbed away tears from his eyes as he recounted the blowback he received in the US for visiting Kim : "When I went back home, I got so many death threats. And I believed in North Korea, and I couldn't even go home. I couldn't even go home, for thirty days. But I kept my head up." After helping train North Korean basketball players and arranging to bring ex-NBA players to the country, according to Rodman, Kim approached him to say, "Dennis, you know, this is the first time someone ever kept their word to me in this country." The moment was emotional, Rodman said. He encouraged Trump to show his "heart" to Kim....Trump reached out to Rodman before the summit through a secretary to tell Rodman he is "very proud" of him, the basketball star claimed. "We don't need a miracle, but we need the doors to be open so we can start fresh," Rodman said of the historic meeting between the two leaders. "I just wanna bring sports to North Korea. That's it, sports....I'm just so happy to be here, man," he added, calling it "the world's day. Donald Trump should take a lot of credit for this. He went out the box and made this happen." • We're sorry we made you cry, Dennis. Hang in there. You may yet get your chance to take sports to North Korea. Just please remember to put the team logos on red baseball caps.