President Donald Trump made history on Sunday, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit North Korea. Yet his brief handshake with North Korean leader Chairman Kim Jong-un just across the 38th parallel has been criticized as a media stunt and has drawn the ire of political opponents.
“It’s just an honor to be with you, and it was an honor that you asked me to step over that line. And I was proud to step over the line,” Trump told Kim.
Trump’s impromptu visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone followed the G-20 Summit in Japan, and was first floated publicly last week with Trump saying on Twitter he was open to coming to “say Hello(?)!” The meeting was Trump’s third with the North Korean dictator and came just over a year since the two men met in Singapore, which was the first ever meeting between leaders of the two countries.
In a rare public statement, Kim said through a translator that the visit is “an expression of [Trump’s] willingness to eliminate all the unfortunate past” and look to the future.
Trump has been widely criticized for giving Kim an elevated platform on the world stage without firm concessions on nuclear proliferation and an easing of tensions on the Korean peninsula.
“It is a big moment for diplomacy ... but what did the president really get,” John T. Bennett, Roll Call’s White House correspondent, told Cheddar. “This is reality television 101, this is Donald Trump 101.”
Kim sees nuclear weapons as “key to his survival as the supreme leader and giving that up will be a big lose internally,” Bennett added.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the White House was pursuing a new round of negotiations and was open to a nuclear freeze, which would be a far cry from Trump’s stated goal of the complete denuclearization of North Korea. National Security Advisor John Bolton denied the Times report on Monday, saying on Twitter that it was a “reprehensible attempt by someone to box in the President.”
Several Democrats and 2020 presidential candidates spoke out against the meeting and criticized Trump’s affinity for the world’s strongmen. The meeting with Kim also followed a publically jovial chat with Russian President Putin just days prior in Japan.
In a statement to CBS News, a spokesman for former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump’s “coddling of dictators at the expense of American national security and interests is one of the most dangerous ways he's diminishing us on the world stage and subverting our values as a nation.”
California Sen. Kamala Harris also slammed the meeting, tweeting that Trump “should take the North Korean nuclear threat and its crimes against humanity seriously. This is not a photo-op. Our security and our values are at stake.”
Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the U.S. president “shouldn’t be squandering American influence on photo ops and exchanging love letters with a ruthless dictator.”
Trump ended the meeting with Kim on Sunday with an invitation to the White House. North Korean state media reported that the two leaders privately agreed to stay in touch and continue a dialogue.
California's new composting law will affect what residents do in their kitchens. As of this week, Californians will have to recycle excess food in an effort to reduce emissions caused by food waste. Cities and counties will turn recycled food into compost or use it as a renewable energy source. California's new law is the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the country. Rachel Wagoner, Director of the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery called the law 'the biggest change to trash' since recycling started in the 1980s. She joined Cheddar Climate to discuss.
As the U.S. comes up on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.,A.C. Thompson, investigative reporter at ProPublica, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to discuss updates to American Insurrection by FRONTLINE, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. The documentary investigates the attack on the Capitol touched off by the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump but with new information gleaned since the event including interviews with lawmakers and law enforcement and the evolution of groups like the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys behind the attack. "In some ways those groups that were kind of the vanguard of January 6 are maybe no longer relevant because their message is everywhere," he said.
A new report from ProPublica and the Washington Post found that Facebook Groups played a major role in the spread of misinformation linked to the January 6 insurrection with more than 650,000 posts claiming that Joe Biden's election victory was illegitimate.
Millions of Americans with young children have relied on the child tax credit since the federal government began issuing checks in July 2021. The last round of payments was sent out just before the Christmas holiday — at the same time as the omicron variant surged. Leah Hamilton, associate professor of social work at Appalachian State University, joined Cheddar to discuss what the end to the tax credit means as the U.S. sees the end of many relief programs and its highest number of COVID cases since the start of the pandemic. "It'll become harder for families to meet their basic needs, increasing national childhood poverty rates and the proportion of families who have difficulty putting food on the table, maintaining stable housing, and paying their bills," Hamilton said. She also pointed to research that the credit as a long-term investment in children offsets claims that it contributes to macroeconomic impacts like inflation.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the week-end, just days after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call comes as Washington prepares to meet with Moscow on January 10, as tensions mount over Russia's military build up near its border with Ukraine. Cheddar News speaks with Mustafa Tameez, a former advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about the issue.
Several Silicon Valley insiders are being accused of contorting a 1990s-era tax break to avoid taxes on millions of dollars of investment profits. The tax break is known as the qualified small business stock exemption, and it allows early investors in certain companies to avoid half of the taxes on up to $10 million in capital gains. A piece recently published in the New York Times says venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz replicated the tax exemption by giving shares of companies to friends and family, who would otherwise face a 23.8% capital gains bill. The CEO of Roblox is also accused of replicating the tax break for his family members at least 12 times. Although the loophole known as 'stacking' is considered to be legal, the Times piece implies that the exemption has been manipulated for the ultra-wealthy to become more wealthy. Greycroft co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Alan Patricof joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Chris Sommerfeldt, City Hall reporter for the New York Daily News, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses both the wins and losses of Bill de Blasio's eight years as New York City Mayor.
