We're not totally sure Trump knows who's leader of North Korea

Comforting.
 By 
Marcus Gilmer
 on 
We're not totally sure Trump knows who's leader of North Korea
"That guy" Credit: AP/REX/Shutterstock

Look, governing is hard, O.K.?

Did you know there are seven -- SEVEN -- continents?! That's as many continents as there were people helping out Snow White and who can really rattle off the names of all those little guys off the top of their head?

And then each of these continents has countries, some of them MULTIPLE countries and all of those countries have LEADERS and they all have names that aren't easy to remember like George or Ronald or even Donald.

So forgive a guy when he's not exactly sure who's even running North Korea as it seems could be the case with the current U.S. president, Donald Trump.

In an interview on -- what else? -- Fox & Friends that aired Tuesday morning, Trump, apparently referring to North Korea's Kim Jong-un, discussed how previous presidents (only the Democratic ones) had been hoodwinked. Here's the quote:

“I hope things work out well. I hope there’s going to be peace, but they’ve been talking with this gentleman for a long time. You read Clinton’s book, he said ‘Oh, we made such a great peace deal’ and it was a joke. You look at different things over the years with President Obama. Everybody has been outplayed. They’ve all been outplayed by this gentleman.”

And here's the thing: In referring to "this gentleman," Trump is implying Clinton and Obama were "outplayed" by the same guy. Assuming the Clinton peace deal Trump is referring to is the Agreed Framework deal of 1994, that agreement was signed by Clinton and Kim Jong-il, Jong-un's father, who died in 2011. (We contacted the White House press office for clarification but at time of publish had not yet heard to which "gentleman" Trump was referring.)

Now, getting Iraq and Syria confused because you're focused on a glorious piece of chocolate cake is one thing but, fine, let's give POTUS the benefit of the doubt and assume he misspoke. Both times.

Syria? Afghanistan? Iraq? Jong-un? Jong-il? Whatever, who's got time for keeping this straight when you have approval ratings to worry about?

Sure, the Trump administration is doing plenty of rhetorical posturing while North Korea is firing off missile tests. At least when Trump kept calling Jong-un "that guy" and a "young dude," he seemed to have some idea who he was talking about.

So let's just give him a break, O.K.? It's like he said after listening to Chinese president Xi Jinping talk about China and North Korea for 10 minutes: "It's not so easy."

Topics Donald Trump

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Marcus Gilmer

Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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