Friday 1 June 2018

Trump goes for Dover sole

It seems a little trite to mention that Trump has decided to stop eating nothing but fast food burgers when so many historically important things are going on in the world. But the president's diet is pretty important. He is looking somewhat heavyweight, even obese, and the wrong diet feeds the brain with the wrong sort of energy. Right now, just 11 days away from holding the Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un, Trump will need whatever brain power he has to be operating at maximum level. So a few dishes of Dover sole, now his chosen dinner meal, could make all the difference. Trump might pass on the same advice he has received from his dietician to the North Korean leader who is definitely over-tubby. Perhaps if they both agree, before the summit, to eat Dover sole during a meal together in Singapore, they might make some decisions that will benefit not just relations between North Korea and the US but with the whole peninsula region. "Dover sole wins the day" would be a nice headline. Meanwhile, the Russians are meddling. You would expect Beijing to be on the line to Pyongyang every few minutes to make sure the right script is written for the summit. But Moscow doesn't want to be left out. So Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, just happens to pop over to Pyongyang for a chat with his North Korean counterpart to add Putin's bit to the script. You can be sure neither Beijing nor Moscow want Trump to triumph in Singapore. That would be bad for the egoes of Xi Zinping and Vladimir Putin. If there is to be any progress on North Korea's nukes they will want to grab some of the kudos. But all the signs are that Kim will tell Trump he is fully behind denuclearising North Korea without actually removing any of his weapons from storage, not for years anyway. It is going to be a very long, slow process. But the more Dover sole Trump and Kim can eat in the meanwhile, the better the chance of a healthy conclusion.

No comments:

Post a Comment