Oct 22, 2017

Jimmy Carter says he's willing to meet with Kim Jong-un

Jimmy Carter's last mission? Maureen Dowd visits #39 in Plains, Ga.:

"The 93-year-old would like to pull another rabbit out of a hat — just not a killer rabbit — and enter into a productive partnership with Donald Trump over North Korea. ... One of the basic premises of the Carter Center is that you should talk to dictators."
"I would go, yes," Carter told Maureen.
In 1994, "Carter flew into Pyongyang on his own over the objections of President Bill Clinton and struck a deal with Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of the current leader, ... and the man the grandson models himself on — right down to his hairstyle. North Korea secretly cheated on the deal by pursuing another path to a bomb just four years later."
Carter on Kim Jong-un: "I think he's now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean Peninsula and Japan, and some of our outlying territories in the Pacific, maybe even our mainland."
Carter said he has talked to Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser, who is a good friend, including at Zbigniew Brzezinski's funeral when McMaster asked to sit next to Carter, but has so far gotten a negative response": "I told him that I was available if they ever need me."
Fun fact: "I asked if he had Obama's email address. 'No,' he said flatly."