Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., took to Twitter on Wednesday to compare President Trump to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
A president and a dictator met in Hanoi. One has demanded unquestioned loyalty, bragged about his nuclear arsenal, attacked the press, and employed family members as his advisors. The other is Kim Jong-un.
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) February 27, 2019
It’s not clever. It’s just stupid.
Here’s the thing. Whatever you think of Trump’s fury toward the media (and I think it’s silly), or his loyalty demands, or his oft-stated but effectively harmless disregard for institutions, there’s a major, operative difference between the president and Kim Jong Un: the diametric nature of their power.
Trump derives his power from the Constitution and the voters. That he is accountable to the law and to an independent judiciary has been evident since his administration began. Kim Jong Un, on the other hand, derives his power from his violent destruction of all political opposition, which involves both violent and strange executions and an industry of gulags that imprisons hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
To compare these two leaders is to blur Kim Jong Un’s immense immorality in service of partisan hackery on Twitter. It is also to diminish the American political tradition of democracy bound to the rule of law. Merkley’s wit is shallow.
[Also read: Lindsey Graham: The ‘love crap’ between Trump and Kim Jong Un ‘needs to stop’]
