DANGER MAN

Donald Trump recently tweeted that—if it hadn't been for him—we would right now be in a war with North Korea.

Let's all take a moment to stare at that sentence and let its sweet, sticky gooeyness sink in.

We would be at war with North Korea—right this very moment—if it hadn't been for Donald Trump and, I presume, his masterly manipulation of Kim Jong-un in Singapore.

Holy crap! Did we all just dodge a bullet or what?

Our Secretary of State is on his way to Pyongyang (also right now) to fiddle with the denuclearization business theoretically set in motion in Singapore. Amid word the North Koreans might be continuing to create nuclear material—bomb-making material, I'm pretty sure folks are suggesting.

Putting these three stories together, we might have to conclude there will, in fact, be no denuclearization of North Korea.

But that's okay, because simply by going to Singapore and meeting with Kim—even with no tangible positive outcome visited upon the Korean Peninsula in the future—Donald Trump has released the building pressure in his noggin to set our nuclear missiles loose on the North.

And this may be the best we can hope for, in Korea or anywhere else in the world.

The new (and dangerous) game in Washington these days might be to keep the President from blowing his top and unleashing deadly force on ...somebody.

And with the man's wide-ranging list of enemies and personal affronts, it really could be any country (or any individual) on the face of the planet.

Including our friends and allies.

On the other hand, maybe Trump is just campaigning for that Nobel Peace Prize "everybody" told him he should get. Perhaps he figures he needs to keep reminding folks of just how close we all were to global annihilation—before he stepped in and calmed everybody down.

Or—to be more precise—calmed himself down by slathering praise on his world-saving ass. But can you really expect a Peace Prize for threatening war and then calling it off?

Do I need to remind you how much of the sabre-rattling rhetoric was coming right out of Trump's mouth (or Twitter-wrangling thumbs)? And if it is your memory Kim threatened to blow Guam out of the water, hold up. North Korea merely suggested they might send unarmed missiles down there to bracket the island in a demonstration of their long-range capability. Wiser heads prevailed. (And none of those heads belonged to Donald Trump.)

At the end of the Singapore Summit, the President lowered expectations (which he was otherwise pumping up) by saying he might be standing before the American People in six months to admit there was no lasting progress with North Korea. He also suggested he might avoid any blame by coming up with some excuse or other.

Now he reminds us we are experiencing peace with North Korea this very moment because he made it happen. Not exactly an excuse, but it may have to do.