 You may remember the name Martha Randolph, but if you don't, I'm going to try to help you out. She's a former entertainment industry professional. She's an aspiring educator who accomplished her BA in classical East West studies at Hawaii Pacific University. She has a master's degree in world religions from UH Manoa. We're going to talk about the upcoming, or rather not the upcoming, but the just past Trump, Kim, the TK meeting in Singapore. Singapore, by the way, just seems so irrelevant to the meeting. It doesn't matter that it was Singapore. No. It could have been anywhere, or nowhere. Well, it's significant in the sense that it is a very important government in Asia, in South Asia, and they were willing to do it, and they seem to have friendly relations with everybody. This is important. Singapore. They're brilliant. They're okay with China. They're okay with the Koreas, and they're okay with the United States. They know how to navigate those waters. They sure do. So, Martha, we met earlier this week. We met before the meeting actually took place. We made some expectations and predictions and what have you. I mean, largely what you were saying before has come true. This is true, which I have to admit, I was the one who called you and said, let's do a follow-up, because I was excited by the fact that the outcome, which you'd asked me what my opinion was, the outcome was pretty much what I expected. What I did not expect was that the Trump rhetoric about Kim Jong-un would turn out to actually be sensible considering the real history. Not that Trump knows he's being sensible. Trump is being Trump. So if everyone says, oh, he's being manipulated, maybe he is. Is he being friendly to a dictator? Yes, he absolutely is, but then Trump thinks that as a government leader, he should also be a dictator. Friendly? Smile a lot, but a dictator. Is, does Trump know why what he's saying is valid? Absolutely not. But I am very upset with the liberal media who is doing, you know. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It surely is. And all I need is for Trump to be right twice a day in this situation, which is very important because we do have to let go of the past. We do have to deal with Kim Jong-un as a new leader in a new era, and we have to deal with the realities of the situation, which is that of the two of them, the person who is most crazy is Trump, not Kim Jong-un. Let me push back with you, OK? They spent 20 minutes together. They did. Those speaks the other fellow's language. They couldn't really talk that much. And apparently they didn't have conversations before or after. It was done through staff, I suppose, and you got to give credit to staff where credit is due, I suppose. And it was a very quick meeting, so much so that he knew it was going to be a quick meeting, and he said before the meeting ever began that he'd be leaving earlier than he had anticipated, and he flew back through Hawaii without so much as a fairly well. Right. You know, just refueling, so to speak. And that was it. This is all, in my view, a play to the press. And the agreement itself is two pages long, it's totally general. There are no details in there. It is all an agreement to agree about some pretty vague principles. And some people say that Trump did not get a better deal because there's no way that he can really confirm denuclearization within his term of office, even if he wins the second term of office. On the other hand, if they say, even if we remove our troops, I'm not sure that's part of the deal. I'm not sure what is the deal, remove our troops and also stop doing joint exercises with South Korea, you know, that's tangible. So we're doing something tangible. Kim Jong-un is not doing anything tangible. There's a pie in the sky for later. Now, furthermore, may I just take this point also, furthermore, he did this without consulting South Korea. He did this without consulting Tokyo, Japan, and he did this without consulting China. And so, you know, this is not good diplomacy. No, it's not. This is off the back of his hand here. Yes. But if he's lucky to say that there's a benefit, that's good, but I think there's also a price to be paid for failing to properly deal with neighboring states. There's no question, as I said, that Trump doesn't have a clue why what he's doing is right or wrong. And everything you said is absolutely right. He was making it up as he went along. However, in this case, some of these moves happen to be the ones that Korea has been waiting for for a while and also the ones most likely to lead to a denuclearization. We have to remember, as I said on Monday when we talked initially, that Korea has been afraid the United States plans to invade because the United States and South Korea never reached a peace agreement at the end of the Korean War. They reached an armistice, an agreement not to change the status quo. Do you really think that a guy so sophisticated and he is sophisticated, he's 34 years old, but he's as sophisticated as any 34-year-old you might meet and who was trained in Switzerland really believed that the Americans, I mean, any reads and studies, the American psyche, all the newspapers, what have you, do you think he really believed or believes that the U.S. would actually bomb him, that the U.S. would actually attack him and that that having military equipment around North Korea was a real threat? Well, you have to remember that until Kim and the recent Olympic Games, there wasn't a lot of detente between South Korea and North Korea. And the countries that were afraid, he was less afraid of the United States than he was of South Korea, of China, not Japan, because Japan has its own problems. But those countries were afraid of his nuclear weapons. They really are in an area that could be affected by a nuclear, any, even a nuclear accident, even a nuclear accident in Japan affected the West Coast of California. Did we assume that Japan was out to get us? No, they had an accident. So anytime you're dealing with nuclear material, you are dealing with a dangerous situation. Now, what has been happening is that, as I said, Korea has been manufacturing this we're crazy enough to let it go image because that kept the world on edge. Kim Jong-yong has tried over his term of power. He has had to consolidate his position. I don't know why Americans don't understand this. There have been more juntas in dictatorship countries than anywhere else. He could have been replaced by his uncle, who of course was the first one he had killed. All right, because his uncle had connections in China. He could have been replaced by his half-brother, who was also under the protection of China and out of Korea. He had him killed. Now, I'm not saying that's a great thing, but excuse me, Mr. Putin is having all sorts of people killed and put in jail. And everyone says, oh, yes, but he's not as bad as Kim Jong-un. I'm sorry, but he is. There are a lot of things that have to be worked out, but you have to start somewhere. The fact that Trump's ego and his ignorance and his policies in this case are putting us in the right direction is just a happenstance. If Kim had made any firm agreement with Trump, he could have been just as sure that it would have been torn up when Trump got home. Trump really is the unknown factor. He can change his mind two minutes from now. He can be influenced by his new people that he's put around him, and then he would turn around and say, oh, gee, wait a minute, I don't want to—I'm changing my mind on this. It wasn't enough of an agreement. But he did get something. He got Kim Jong-un to say he's going to give back the soldiers' remains. As you pointed out when we were discussing this privately, that doesn't affect the political situation for North Korea. Yes, but Kim has to deal with his generals. He would be looking like an idiot if he gave anything away to Trump that could put his country in a precarious situation. That's so interesting because really, if you make the comparison, it seems like Kim Jong-un has to do more to satisfy his generals and whoever is advising him and controlling him than Trump does. Trump can operate with the back of his hand. He can. And he has. And it happened. Trump right now has done things that a normal, intelligent Congress would have already put a stop to. But the Republican Party is now under the control of the extreme right-wingers, and they want to support these things that are being done. And they have shown their hand because they undermined President Obama in every case, and they are promoting their own agenda. When Trump tries to go against them as in threatening to fire sessions, they stand up and say, no, I don't think you're going to do that. And have you noticed that every time Trump says it, eventually it gets dropped? Because I think that's where they put their foot down. But that doesn't stop Mr. Sessions from doing things to immigrants and potential refugees that border as much on abuse and criminalization and go against the laws of the United States in our regards to refugees than has ever been done before. I'm going to talk in his confirmation hearing about the history that he was a racist, and I guess there must have been some fire with that smoke. That is definitely a dampened down fire. And there's nothing new here. The only difference is Mr. Sessions had been a part of the Senate for a long time, and the Senate tends to support its own, even when they disagree with them. But Mr. Sessions did know enough law to recuse himself from an investigation where he would have been violating the law if he hadn't. Trump was furious and tried to get him fired. Well, I'll go a step further. He lied to the congressional committee, the Senate committee, that ultimately confirmed him. The confirmation was based on a lie. Absolutely. So a recusal doesn't satisfy me at all. I would reverse the whole thing. Well, that's true. He should not have been confirmed. He should not have been confirmed. But we're dealing with the reality of what the current political situation is. And what I'm saying is to get back to Korea. Let's just remember that it must sound like I'm being a champion of Kim. I'm not. I'm simply seeing the reality of his situation and recognizing that we cannot judge his situation based on what we think it should be or what the country should have done. You have to see it for what it is. He cannot simply overturn all of his support network by agreeing to everything the United States wants. He's going to have to negotiate. His negotiation is more precarious because they can overthrow him. He does not have direct control over the military unless the people who have control over the military want him to have that control. He may have more risk than Trump does. He has, actually, because Donald Trump has been threatening to pardon himself if he's found guilty of a crime. And right now, there's nothing in our Constitution that specifically prohibits that. The Founders must be turning yet again in their graves. Do you remember, excuse me, when Nixon was actually indicated that he did commit a crime even though he did withdraw himself from office, Gerald Ford pardoned him. He didn't pardon himself, but I'm very sure that one of the deals that he made before he resigned from office was that the next president, who was going to be his vice president, would officially pardon him from any crime. And then he goes into retirement. It's never been done that a president has pardoned himself, and the issue has never even come up before Congress. And for Trump to even suggest that, gives me an Excedrin number nine headache. And when I get an Excedrin number nine headache, I take a break. That's what we're going to do now. Okay, we'll take a break. Never mind. We'll be right back. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawai.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. I am Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Cold Green for Thinktecawai. I appear every other Monday at three. And I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. We're back with Martha Randolph, and we're talking about North Korea. Martha made some pretty good predictions on Monday before the meeting between Trump and Kim. And I'm going to ask her to make predictions now. This is much more difficult now, because in a funny way, it's a carte blanca right now. That's what that agreement is. It's an agreement to agree. It doesn't have hard terms. Nobody knows what those two guys are going to do. And I think you laid a pretty good foundation for the fact that Kim Jong-un is under pressures. We may not fully understand, but Trump is not under pressures, and he is getting a lot of inappropriate support from the Republican Party. This is true. And he's going to play this for everything it's worth, because he has done something that no other president has succeeded in. However, one of the reasons those presidents haven't succeeded is because they kept holding on to a long-term party line. By party, I mean the United States' attitude, not just Republican or Democrat. Which basically said, North Korea is a vicious and sane enemy. And unless they do certain things for us first, we are not going to do anything that changes for them. Well, I think the smart thing for North Korea to do is follow through on the one thing that was actually spelled out, which had to do with the return of the remains and identities of American soldiers. It doesn't hurt them. It doesn't hurt them. It makes them work good. It's like a gesture that he did a couple of times. He freed those American prisoners, remember, and did that before we even had a conflict. And he destroyed one of his nuclear facilities, too. That's true. Just a few days ago. That's true. And when you have multiples, you can destroy one or two. Just as we found out when Gorbachev told Ronald Reagan, I'm going to destroy several thousand missiles that are old and obsolete anyway. What are you going to do? And that was America had to compensate, had to respond in some way. So getting rid of your garbage and making it a great political gesture is not a bad idea. So okay, I think it's a really good prediction because it's rational. But I don't know what Donald Trump will do. Donald Trump is the true unknown here. He can go in any direction according to who had his ear last. And if he thinks for a minute that he is being played or someone convinces him that he is, he could turn around and say, well, we're not going to do anything until we see some action. But if Kim is smart, if he plays this smart, he will give what he can that is a good gesture. He could follow up. I got to tell you, Mr. Trump, if you're listening, work on freeing the Japanese prisoners and the South Korean prisoners because he can let them go unless they are actual spies. He can let them go and get a lot of big points with America and those countries to show he has good faith. So work on that one. And again, sanctions. Well, right now, China is giving Korea and North Korea a lot of trouble. So I am very sure that Kim Jong-yong would rather work back his dependency on China and their influence on his country and his decisions by building up something with the United States. I think you really put your finger on something. China wants to see America embarrassed. It always does. Russia wants to see America embarrassed. So if Kim Jong-un does reasonable things, right things, good things, things, iconic things that show his good faith. And do not put his country in a precarious position. Then he looks good. And China is happy. Russia is happy. And Trump looks like a hero, which he wants. So the question really is very hard to predict what Trump will do because we never can predict what Trump will do. But I would like to ask you this question. Who is going to break it first? Who's going to break the sense of agreement? Who's going to go shouting at the other one first? I think that the question simply becomes whether Trump is going to listen to any of his people and if the stupid things that happened the first time that caused the first summit to be canceled might happen again. Is his vice president going to say something? Is his new secretary of security going to say something that sounds threatening to North Korea? Because then their response, and I don't think this is Kim at all. I think it's the pattern of people he has in charge, will immediately respond with verbal aggression. And then Trump will respond with verbal aggression to that verbal aggression. And it's like a bunch of bullies in a school yard. Who will be making the aggressive statements first? That I cannot predict. I can. Okay. Trump. That's what I think. I think Kim Jong-un is smart enough to know that if he plays the good guy role, Trump will ultimately break the deal and he will have the high road. He's looking for the high road. He should be looking for the high road. Trump will ultimately do what Trump always does, take the low road. Well, he will certainly, if he's encouraged to do that, buy his staff. And that's my concern. Because a lot of people will hammer at him that you didn't really get anything. And he will say, well, we're not going to change any of our policies until we get something substantial. Meantime, he did send his secretary of state over, and they are talking. So it could be that the smartest thing he could do is get himself out of the picture and let some people with some knowledge sit down and work things out. But I tell you what I do believe. I do believe that Kim Jong-un is sincere in wanting to build up some kind of better relationship with the United States. I think he could only have done it under these circumstances when the government is being run by someone who's willing to throw away these standards that had existed before. And what I'd like to think happens is that enough will have been accomplished that by the time we get another president and maybe a whole new Congress, rather than backtracking and becoming absolutist about, oh, no, we can't trust you, they will pick up on this forward motion and then start to make it closer to a reality. That things will ultimately be normalized now when it normalizes relations. Exactly, exactly. In some ways, it takes someone coming from left field to start breaking down an antiquated and poorly thought out policy based on Cold War politics from 50 years ago or more. And I'm sorry, but we've been running those too long. So I agree with you that if the bad stuff happens, it will happen on our side first, but if he is smart and I don't know how much control he has, then Kim will stay calm. He will become the calm person and he will be the pacifist and he will be cool and he'll let the Americans make fools of themselves. He's in a perfect position to do that. And then he has options. Then he can say, well, you know, all that good guy stuff I was doing, I can't do that anymore. You know, you're the bad guy. So back to the drawing boards with our nuclear weapons, let's get it going again. We have to protect ourselves from the likes of you. If, I mean, we don't actually know the facts. We have a lot of experts who say we know how many weapons they have. We know how much nuclear material they have. And as I said, if you have old stuff that's not working anyway. And you start to destroy it just to make yourself look good. What is it costing you? Actually nothing. And so I think the smartest thing he could do is continue the process and let America look like the idiots and who's breaking the contract, but not go far enough to completely give up his power base. Let me factor one other thing in there. Trump doesn't want to look like an idiot right now because they got the midterms and they're only 120 days away. And you've got Europe, which is sanging in the balance after a really bad G7 meeting. And so his global reputation, influence and all that is at a tipping point. So I suggest to you that he's not going to mess it up until after the elections. Well, unfortunately, even Trump's people will tell you they don't know what he's going to do. That has always been the problem. I don't think Trump cares at all what his relationship is to Europe or his allies or he wouldn't have done the things he's done. I don't think he's as good a businessman as he thinks because some of the choices he's making may sound good economically, but the real economists will tell you why that doesn't work out. I have heard people in America with corporations who are dependent on parts coming from another country where they will now not be able to afford those parts because of these new situations. I learned a long time ago that economics, internationally, is a far more complicated thing than it seems to be. And you need experts, and that's why you have them. Trump does not care right now about the Republican elections because he still really believes that he could kill someone in the White House and his supporters would continue to support him. The question becomes, this may be true, the question becomes, are there enough responsible Republicans to be so offended by what has gone on that they refuse to vote for the people who are Trump supporters, and are there enough responsible Democrats who stayed home at the last election or voted for some obscure person because they believed the stories about Hillary Clinton? Are they going to get up off their butts and get down to the polls? Because right now the Republicans have cleansed the polls of a lot of people that usually vote Democratic, but we still have a Democratic majority, Democratic Party majority in this country. Your job is to get out and vote and make a logical, sensible vote. Not an idealistic one because your goal is to undermine the right-wing Republican Party and Donald Trump. It is not to get the ideal candidate. You have got to focus. Let me throw one more factor in. We haven't talked about it in the show, but I think it's a factor which will affect his distraction, you know, conduct going forward because he always tries to distract from unpleasant things and failures. So we haven't heard from Mr. Mueller. You know, that investigation hasn't gone anywhere. I hear it's wrapping up. I've heard it's beginning to wrap up. If he wraps up now and before that 120 days, that could have a huge effect on things and Trump will have to respond and distract. And distraction may include getting into a fight with North Korea, you know, scapegoat kind of thing. The other thing is that he's got all these, you mentioned, this is what reminded me of it, all these business problems. There's a suit, maybe two suits now, by the state of New York against him. Against his charity, yeah. Charitable trust that he used it appropriately for political purposes. He, you know, he's got the Stormy Daniels thing on him. He's got a bunch of problems. Business problems, call it, but they're also personal, you know. They're legal problems, actually. Public relations problems, yeah. Legal problems and they may come together in the next 120 days. This is true. I don't think, however, he would... I do agree that the whole Korean thing has been part of a distraction and a publicity stunt. He's done this before. And I do think he would try to find some other way of distracting. I don't think he would undermine this because this is the first thing he's done that he could actually hold a banner up and say, all these years, you haven't been able to accomplish anything and I am accomplishing something in this area. So for him to undermine it completely would have to rely on his being able to turn Kim into the bad guy. And as I said, Kim and his people are very smart. They've done their research. They came prepared and he has been very careful in his dealings with Trump. And I don't think he's going to give Trump the excuse that Trump needs to create that kind of distraction. But there are lots of other places he can be distracting. He can go back into the immigrant situation. He can go back into the refugees. America is separating families at the border. And this is children taken away from their parents. This is horrific. And I'm sorry, but this man is using his power and he's being backed by a Republican Party to create in America the kind of governments we all keep talking about, the fact that we don't support them. They are being put there. There's no due process. There is nothing legal or official about this. They haven't been shot yet, but that's all right. They reserve killing African Americans by the police as the people whose rights are being over mined by hostile and military action by lawmakers and law givers in this country. We're out of time, Martha. Thank you for coming back for more of this. And I would like to do it again and again. I'd like to hear you out on all these things as they go forward. As they go forward. Just named a number of threads. And I'd like to hear your thoughts about it. Let's see what he does next. And let's meet again when we know if our predictions were accurate. And let's find out how Martha Randolph really- If my predictions are really good, I would like to initiate some betting things here because I could use some extra cash. So if this works, ladies and gentlemen, let's create something that generates the funds necessary to help people who are in need. I think that'd be a great idea. Martha Randolph. Okay. Form citizen. Thank you so much. There we go. Bye-bye.