Former NBA star Dennis Rodman returned from his second trip to North Korea over the weekend, calling the communist dictator Kim Jong-un “a friend” and a “good dad,” and vowing to return next January to play exhibition basketball matches.
But the unlikely diplomat, with an even more unlikely new friend, also had some advice for President Obama. Rodman implored the president to reach out to Kim Jong-un, saying, “You don’t have to talk about politics, talk about anything in the world. Meet him in Switzerland . . . just meet him or give him a call. That’s all he wants.” Perhaps some chocolate and Chuckoo clock shopping would sufficiently break the ice?
The Worm wasn’t the only bizarre diplomatic trip over the weekend, however. Congressmembers Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Steve King visited Egypt and gave press conference on Egyptian TV that seemed more like parody than high-stakes political diplomacy. Their point was simple: the Egyptian military is good, and the Muslim Brotherhood is evil. Congresswoman Bachmann voiced her support for continuing U.S. aide to Egypt’s military in order to help them “defeat our common enemy, which are the terrorists, known as the Muslim Brotherhood.” Inexplicably, she also liked the Muslim Brotherhood to the September 11th attacks, saying, “We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed around the world….We remember who caused 9/11 in America.”
Congressman Gohmert wasn’t much more accurate. In his statement, demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood and lionizing the Egyptian military that overthrew them, he went so far as to compare the military’s leader General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi to George Washington. The Texas Republican called General el-Sisi “a man who is leader of the military, who might have a shot at being elected President, but is more concerned about giving his life to help his country, Egypt.” The New York Times exposes this naive, black-and-white view of the situation in Egypt, writing, “Mr. Gohmert overlooked the new government’s mass shootings of hundreds of mostly unarmed protesters, its sweeping roundup of thousands of political opponents and its suspension of all legal protection against arbitrary arrest or other police abuse….”
The Senate has the three amigos, now the House has the three stooges. Watch Alex Wagner break down America’s diplomatic B Team in the video above.
Joshua Chaffee