Russia mocks Trump as a 'clown' for failure in North Korea

After hyping his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump is now desperately trying to spin the failed talks into some sort of victory — and no one is enjoying watching Trump squirm as much as Russia.

Clearly embarrassed by the failure, Trump and his allies have been hard at work trying to convince people that the summit wasn’t really as bad as it seems.

Russian officials have taken note of these efforts, and they’re responding by piling on the criticism and mercilessly ridiculing Trump’s attempt to look strong after such a weak performance on the world stage.

As investigative reporter Julia Davis put it, “Moscow wanted to show just how weak Trump really is.”

And that they did.

On a segment of Russian state TV program “Vesti Nedeli,” host Dmitry Kiselyov gleefully laid out all of Trump’s foreign policy failures, saying, “Trump miraculously managed to worsen relations on all fronts: with the European Union, China, Russia.”

“Total failure in Syria. The same with Turkey. Failure with Iran and failure with Venezuela. Nothing but failures at every turn,” Kiselyov jeered.

He then mocked Trump for calling himself a master dealmaker who could talk Kim Jong Un into giving up North Korea’s supply of nuclear weapons.

“Trump, who calls himself the ‘master of the deal,’ left Vietnam empty-handed,” Kiselyov said of Trump’s failed North Korea summit.

Indeed, while Trump made concessions to North Korea — including halting joint military exercises with South Korea and canceling two scheduled military drills — Kim Jong Un walked away from the talks without giving up anything.

Ahead of the summit, Trump even dropped the demand that North Korea provide a full accounting of its nuclear arsenal. This is considered a key component of any potential nuclear deal with North Korea, so dropping the demand was essentially an admission that no such deal would be reached at the summit.

Citing these concessions, Russia’s former ambassador to North Korea, Gleb Ivashentsev, called the summit a huge victory for North Korea’s young leader.

Kim Jong Un “[forced] the head of the largest imperialist nation to negotiate with him as an equal,” Ivashentsev told Russia’s state TV program “60 minutes,” according to The Daily Beast.

He continued, suggesting that Trump used the summit to distract from his failures at home, including the recent government shutdown, his failure to secure funding for a border wall, and the damning testimony of Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.

Other Russian officials offered similar takes, saying the summit represents a colossal failure for Trump and a monumental achievement for Kim Jong Un, who managed to put himself on equal footing with the leader of the free world — without giving up a thing.

Similarly, several Russian officials suggested that Kim Jong Un and other world leaders may be hesitant to make any deals with Trump because the future of his presidency isn’t even certain.

The president of Russia’s Institute of the Middle East mockingly referred to Trump as the “acting president of the United States,” while Konstantin Asmolov, an expert from the Center for Korean Studies, told Russian state TV that making a deal with Trump — whom he referred to as a “clown” — would be foolish, since he could soon be ousted from office.

Perhaps the most humiliating part of all of this? Russian state media is offering a more accurate take on Trump’s failed North Korea summit than the White House and its personal propaganda arm at Fox News.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.