Overmatched

So Trump and Kim Jung Un are supposed to hook up, huh? I thought Trump only hooked up with porn queens. Seriously, folks, if that ever comes to pass, which is not a lock by any means, given how squirrelly these two jaspers are, I wouldn’t look for Donnie to win any diplomatic blue ribbons.

First, he has to stop sitting on the edge of his chair like a baboon perched in a cage, his hands in front of his knees like he is waiting to strangle a kitten. It ain’t presidential, bro. Ask the kitten.

Also, here’s another thing: the North Koreans are slick negotiators, if you can get them to the table. Speaking of tables, I’ve actually been in the room at Panmunjon where they negotiated the truce with North Korea. A big white line runs down the center of the long table there, literally separating the two Koreas. At one point, the North Koreans actually elevated their chairs just enough to give them what they hoped was a psychological advantage. So I’d give the edge to NK in any psywar with Trump.

Dictators are usually pretty straight ahead when it comes to diplomacy. You could say Jimmy Hoffa was a dictator when it came to the Teamsters, and I knew a union guy who said Hoffa had three rules for negotiating: know what you want, state it clearly, and don’t deviate an inch. That sounds like the style of somebody like Kim.

Trump, though, might have a half-assed game plan, but when the action starts he’s liable to toss it out the window and give the store away if he is played the right way. So I think that Trump will be  overmatched in any talk with even a young dude like Kim – should that ever happen.

Now the guy that Trump is clearly overmatched against is Robert Swann Mueller III. It is a battle of wits perchance, and Trump is obviously lightly armed. Robert Mueller is everything Donald Trump is not: ethical, decent and – probably most important – a devout believer in the rule of law.

He led a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Equally important is that he was Director of the FBI for eleven years and put guys like John Gotti away. And in prep school he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams. In soccer you have to run all day and for hockey and lacrosse you have to be tough first of all.

Robert Mueller is legit tough. Donald Trump is bully tough. I remember when I was in the fourth grade of the Robert Zane School we had a terrible bully named Jay Woltz. He was in the sixth grade and was a full-grown adult already; he ruled the schoolyard like a tyrant. He was mostly a shakedown artist. We bought candy every day from a horrible troll named Pop who dealt his stuff from a filthy trailer just across the railroad tracks from Zane School. Pop was fittingly in a wheelchair and would try to hit kids with his cane or grab the girls’ hands. He constantly spat rancid tobacco juice into a large tin can.

Jay Woltz would station himself outside Pop’s and arbitrarily shake down whoever his random eye lit on. Every so often he would rough somebody up to keep the fear fires stoked.

Then Bob Philips came. He was almost a fully-grown man himself and already had a certain cheerful dignity in how he treated others. He was also a totally gifted and natural athlete. He quickly surpassed bully Jay Woltz as the true star of our school. Jay Woltz had declared himself the star of all the sports and had taken for himself the most glamorous and starring positions.

But you could see that Jay Woltz  knew the score and he seethed against Bob Philips and finally he made his move. He came up to Bob Philips as he was going into Pop’s and braced him for money.

Bob Philips gave him a funny look and just shook his head. Jay Woltz shoved him and Philips came back with so many well thrown and well aimed punches that Jay Woltz actually turned and fled back across the railroad tracks, his nose bloodied and one eye shut.

That little Zane School parable is of course self-explanatory vis a vis Trump versus Mueller.

Trump overmatched. No contest. Mueller by TKO.