As Trump Rescued NK Hostages, Media's Mocking of Hostages Comes Back To Bite Them
The differences couldn’t be clearer.
As much of the country celebrated Wednesday with President Donald Trump at the safe return of three American citizens from the hellhole of North Korea’s gulag system, the events were a stark reminder of how Americans held in the Hermit Kingdom fared before Trump completely changed the dynamic between the two countries.
And the disgraceful ways liberals treated the capture of one particular American citizen during the Obama administration should never be forgotten.
According to The New York Times, the three released men were businessman Kim Dong-chui, college accounting teacher Tony Kim (also known as Kim Sang-duk) and agricultural research volunteer Kim Hak-song.
All appeared to be physically healthy, though they were taken to Walter Reed National Medical Center for more evaluation, according to the Times.
Their condition is in sharp contrast to that of Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who’d been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in 2016 after confessing to trying to steal a North Korean propaganda poster during a New Year’s trip to Pyongyang that started in December 2015.
Warmbier didn’t return to the United States until June 2017 — comatose, with brain damage and signs of horrendous torture on his body.
Liberals don’t like to be reminded of it now, but the country should never forget how liberal news and commentary outlets, as well as entertainers, treated the story of Warmbier’s arrest and sentencing.
And reminders like this one are coming back to bite the media with a vengeance:
The Huffington Post, Salon, and other far left media outlets celebrated North Korea’s capture and torture of Otto Warmbier.
On tonight of all nights, remember this. https://t.co/zN8UiauOqB
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 10, 2018
Here are a couple of examples of how liberals viewed Warmbier (as published by Mediaite in June 2016):
Huffington Post, March 2016: “North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal.”
Bustle, April 2016: “Why Do People Blame Otto Warmbier For His North Korea Sentence? Privilege Can Sometimes Come At A Price.”
There were some that were even worse. Comedy Central’s Larry Wilmore handled it with a segment called “Straight Outta Pyongyang — Frat Boy Arrested in North Korea,” while a Salon piece about that segment was called “This might be America’s biggest idiot frat boy: Meet the UVa student who thought he could prank North Korea.”
Both have been taken down, and Wilmore’s “Nightly Show” has since been canceled. The Salon piece has an editor’s note that says it’s been removed as a matter of “editorial judgment,” which is funny considering editorial judgment is generally best exercised before publication, not after a piece has shown the world exactly how petty and cruel your worldview really is.
The reality is this: While liberals keep up the pretense that the Obama years were a time of the United States striving for peace and earning respect in the world, exactly the opposite is true.
The Obama Democrats’ craven foreign policy put American citizens at risk, particularly the Obama administration’s toothless, spineless policy of “strategic patience” with the Pyongyang regime. In the case of Warmbier, it literally led to him being tortured to death.
Meanwhile, liberals at home either sat on their hands and did nothing, or actually made fun of a fellow citizen sentenced to a brutal prison term in a foreign country.
With Trump in the Oval Office, three Americans have returned from North Korea healthy, the seemingly obdurate North Korean regime is at least willing to talk about denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, and the world is seriously talking about Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Even the Trump-hating New York Times is speculating about it.
Democrats and their militant arm in the media can hate the results of the 2016 presidential election all they want. They can hate the man who made those results possible.
But the differences between the Trump approach and the Obama approach to leadership could not be more clear. And the liberal media keeps ending up looking soulless, heartless and utterly un-American.
Just ask the Warmbier family.
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