For months, Fox News host Sean Hannity has falsely disparaged the Agreed Framework of 1994, a deal brokered under President Bill Clinton to freeze North Korea’s nuclear program, as an example of the U.S. “sucking up and bribing world dictators.” Now, experts are criticizing the terms of President Donald Trump’s agreement with North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un for conceding more than the 1994 agreement did and for being weaker on denuclearization. But, as expected, Hannity has been praising Trump and the agreement he signed with Kim, saying their summit “exceeded all … expectations.”
The joint statement that Trump and Kim signed on Tuesday fell short of the U.S. demands going into the summit; the deal does not include standards for complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization as the U.S. hoped, and Trump offered a concession to the North Koreans by suspending U.S. military exercises with South Korea.
A number of experts have criticized the deal, saying it provides even weaker terms than did previous deals, including the Agreed Framework, which, unlike the joint statement signed today, required wide-ranging inspections but ultimately fell apart when North Korea was suspected of cheating.
Wendy Sherman, a top negotiator with North Korea in the Clinton and Obama administrations, told The New Yorker, “The document not only doesn’t break new ground—it is less than previous documents, including the 1992 Joint Declaration, the Agreed Framework of 1994, and the September, 2005, Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks.” Ex-CIA officer Bruce Klingner, who is now a Northeast Asia senior research fellow at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, wrote on Twitter, “This is very disappointing. Each of the four main points was in previous documents with NK, some in a stronger, more encompassing way. The denuke bullet is weaker than the Six Party Talks language. And no mention of CVID, verification, human rights.”
Even Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer bemoaned the deal’s similarities to the Agreed Framework. But The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler aptly noted that the U.S. did not suspend military exercises in South Korea under that deal. The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Kissel also categorized Trump’s concession as a misstep compared to the terms of the Agreed Framework.
But these details have been lost on Trump sycophant Sean Hannity, who has said in the months leading up to the summit that Trump is “not naïve like Bill Clinton” and would therefore not be “duped” into appeasement.
And this morning, Hannity’s astounding propaganda was again on full display. He insisted that the summit “had exceeded all of their expectations” and compared Trump’s deal to the Agreed Framework, saying, “The president gave up nothing. There wasn’t a penny paid like Bill Clinton when he made a deal with Kim Jong Un’s father.” The latter statement, which Hannity has breathlessly repeated, is misleading at best; the 1994 agreement did not include payments to North Korea, though it did state that the U.S. would build two light-water reactors in North Korea in order to make it harder for the country to produce weapons-grade material.
And this is not the first example of Hannity’s agenda-driven hypocrisy on North Korea talks. Earlier this year, Media Matters documented the contrast between Hannity’s fawning coverage over the announcement that Trump would meet with the North Korean dictator and his impassioned condemnation of President Barack Obama when he was considering meeting with Kim Jong Il.
And now Shepherd Smith at FOX News is lambasting Trump's deal with North Korea.
Shep Smith on Trump's deal with North Korea: "The United States made concessions in exchange for no hard promises"
SHEPARD SMITH (HOST): The United States made concessions in exchange for no hard promises, stopping joint military exercises with South Korea while North Korea makes a vague commitment to work together towards denuclearization. The agreement the leaders signed is very short on specifics.
[...]
First from the Fox News deck this Tuesday afternoon, the talk happened, hands shaken, photos taken, and during a private meeting, promises were apparently made. But who wanted what? Well, America demanded complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization -- CVID, complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization. There is no guarantee of that, not even words to that effect, and we may not know for years whether we're actually now on that road, or left in the potholes of paths past.
But Kim Jong Un, he wanted the photos, the seat at the table. He wanted the legitimacy that came with the event, the handshake with America's president, and he wanted those military exercises with the Americans and the South Koreans that happen every year to stop. Kim Jong Un got it all for actually doing nothing. Plus, he got a promise, lacking specifics, granted, of security for the North Korean regime.
A regime that has an estimated 120,000 political prisoners across the nation. A regime that tortures and murders its own citizens, imprisons children for the actions of parents and grandparents, and a leader who has committed crimes against humanity.
President Trump insisted the people of the most entrenched land in all the world, North Korea, love their leader. President Trump says he trusts Chairman Kim, and that he's ready to start a new chapter with North Korea. What will the president's special bond with Kim Jong Un mean for the US and its allies? No specifics.
President Trump and Kim signed a joint statement after almost five hours of talks, and in the document, the North Korean leader quote, "reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
No specifics of how to do it. No timeline on getting it done. No verification, no inspection. No, nothing else -- just generalities.
President Trump called the North Korean dictator very talented, and praised him. The United Nations has called him one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in modern history. The president also told Sean Hannity he thinks the dictator Kim Jong Un will start getting rid of his nukes right away.
[.. video of Trump saying he trusts Kim Jong Un and we should to if we just "look at what he's done."]
We cannot look at what he's done. He hasn't even copped to what capabilities he has, what weapons he possesses, much less allowed anyone to come take a gander.
As for the military exercises with South Korea, a 300 or so thousand person-strong event that takes the whole year to plan and coordinate, with members of both nations' militaries operating in tandem with the goal of practicing defense against attack -- President Trump cancelled those without so much as a phone call or a text message to South Korean leaders. President Trump called Operation Key Resolve the "provocative war games," and he nixed them.
Remember that when Bill O'Reilly was criticized by Bill Maher and Ted Koppel for passing along false information on his and Hannity's shows, he defended FOX News' integrity by saying it is OK for them to say false things because they are just "opinion" shows, whereas the "hard news" at FOX is trustworthy stuff. The "hard news" comes from the non-opinion guys like Shep Smith.