In a post below, Charles Krauthammer is quoted on the subject of Donald Trump and Susana Martinez. Trump went after her — according to Trump himself — because she had not been “nice” to him. Her not-niceness was manifested in her absence from a rally of his.
Trump has had warm words for Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York. De Blasio is very different from Martinez: He is a leftist who honeymooned in the Castros’ Cuba; Susana Martinez is a Reagan Republican who spent 25 years as a DA before becoming governor.
How to explain Trump’s softness on de Blasio? I think he explained it himself: “He actually said some very nice things about me at a recent cocktail party, I was told by somebody, and I thought that was very nice.”
Earlier in this campaign, Putin flattered Trump. Trump made clear that he had been flattered — and flattered Putin back. Now Kim Jong-un has come out in favor of Trump. If you threaten to abandon the free part of Korea — South Korea — you will indeed win the favor of the psychotic, totalitarian, nuclear-tipped regime in the north.
What if the ayatollah Khamenei flatters Trump? Will Trump sweeten the Iran deal?
Normalizers of Trump — who include some people I much admire — should consider all this.