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Mike Hosking: De-nuke commitment means a safer world

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 13 Jun 2018, 6:13AM
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un in Singapore yesterday. (Photo / Getty)
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un in Singapore yesterday. (Photo / Getty)

Mike Hosking: De-nuke commitment means a safer world

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 13 Jun 2018, 6:13AM

Not that I think we will see it or indeed we would even expect it.

But you have to wonder just what it would take for a few of the Trump critics to swallow just a small amount of pride and concede that they just might have been wrong.

What became very clear at the signing yesterday, and that’s once you got past the fact there was a signing and it was clearly more substantial than a photo op,  it became very obvious that a great deal more work had gone into this summit than many might have imagined.

You don’t spend a hand full of hours together with interpreters and drum up that sort of paperwork.

So the sense this might be a bit seat-of-the-pants was a very poor misread by those who choose to see Trump as light weight.

A good day would have been an acknowledgement things went well and they were looking forward to meeting again.

A great day was anything more than that.

The fact they came up with the de-nuke commitment is more than you could have ever really dreamed of.

Is there a lot more to come? Of course. Is more detail required? Yes.

But let's go back to what just the unfolding of yesterday means, a safer world.

The rockets and insults are off, the mood is better and the prospects are excellent. Just that alone makes the planet an immeasurably better place.

If it all unfolds the way the document suggests it can, who can possibly argue that the United States President hasn’t pulled off perhaps the greatest peace deal of the modern age.

And with it he adds to his curriculum vitae a growing series of genuine achievements.

His poll ratings are up, his economy is as good as anywhere on Earth.

His stance on trade is precisely what he said he would deliver. No a country like us doesn’t like it, we don’t get it and you'd be right to think it leads nowhere good.

But we don’t vote.

The person in Michigan or Pennsylvania who did will be lapping it up.  Because they like protectionism, they like patriotism and they like politicians who do what they say they're going to do.

Despite the unconventional, sporadic, manic, maybe even mad way all of this is conducted, Trump is winning. Trump is doing what he said he would do.

Even if at this stage, a year and a half in, even if you still think he's insane, surely we can admire the tenacity, the dedication to the task and the unrelenting self-belief.

He has been in the news every single one of those days. And for a man of 72 as of Friday, you have to admire the stamina.

By the mid-terms this November, should this all continue to unfold the way it looks like, his party should reap the rewards of his efforts.

If it continues until 2020, you'd be an idiot to bet against four more years. 

The Democrats don’t even have a candidate or anyone who looks like a candidate. And yet their opponent has an economy the envy of any, and as of yesterday he's written himself into the history books.

And if it carries on in a similar vein straight into a Nobel Peace Prize

 

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