North Korean troops will become ‘cannon fodder’ if they join Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea says

Business Insider

North Korean troops will become ‘cannon fodder’ if they join Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea says

Kwan Wei Kevin Tan – October 31, 2024

Ukrainian releases video of Russian troops surrendering after a surprise attackScroll back up to restore default view.

  • South Korea’s UN ambassador says North Korean soldiers will become “cannon fodder” in Ukraine.
  • North Korea is believed to have sent thousands of troops to aid in the Russian war effort.
  • South Korea’s prediction echoes what Ukraine and the US have said about Russia’s war of attrition.

North Korean troops headed to fight in Ukraine will “end up as mere cannon fodder,” Joonkook Hwang, the South Korean ambassador to the UN, said on Wednesday.

Hwang was speaking at a UN Security Council briefing in New York on the Russian invasion of Ukraine when he referenced North Korea’s involvement in the conflict.

North Korea is believed to have sent thousands of troops to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine, per officials from South Korea, Ukraine, and the US.

“As legitimate military targets, they will end up as mere cannon fodder, while the wages they are supposed to receive from Russia
will end up squarely in Kim Jong-un’s pocket,” Hwang said of the Russia-bound North Korean troops.

“Pyongyang’s treatment of its young soldiers, its own people, as expendable will be never forgiven,” he added.

South Korea’s mission to the UN declined to comment when approached by Business Insider.

‘Cannon fodder’

The news of North Korea’s troops joining Russian troops comes as Russia has struggled to find the manpower for its military. It has turned to tactics like offering significant signing bonuses — as high as 1.9 million rubles, or about $22,000 — and turning to its prison population to fuel its war effort.

Hwang’s prediction of the fate that awaits North Korean troops echoes comments Ukraine and the US have made over the course of the war.

In April 2022, Ukraine’s defense ministry said Russia was having trouble conscripting troops because people didn’t want “to become cannon fodder for the occupier’s army.”

In June, the Pentagon said North Korean soldiers will become “cannon fodder” if they are sent to aid the Russian war effort.

Russia has come to rely more on its allies as it sustains its war in Ukraine. Facing a shortage of arms, Russia has turned to countries like North Korea and Iran for weapons.

In June, Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a wartime pact with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The agreement stands to open up another source of war supplies and ammunition to Russia.

“With boots on the ground alongside the supply of munitions, the DPRK has become the most visible, ardent, and committed supporter of Russia’s aggression in Europe,” Hwang said on Wednesday.

The war in Ukraine has now passed the two-and-a-half-year mark. As Russia continues to wage war, it faces a slew of problems at home, including inflation, currency issues, and a demographic crisis.

Wartime spending is propping up Russia’s economy, with some economists saying the war is the only thing keeping the country from entering an immediate recession.

November 1, 1:00 a.m. — This story has been updated with a response from South Korea’s mission to the UN.

Small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, officials say

CNN

Small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, officials say

Natasha Bertrand, CNN – October 30, 2024

TOPSHOT – This aerial photograph taken on February 1, 2024, shows residential buildings destroyed by shelling in Izyum, Kharkiv region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP) (Photo by ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images)More

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

A small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, according to two western intelligence officials, and officials expect that number to grow as the North Koreans complete training in eastern Russia and move toward the front lines of the war.

The North Korean troops’ presence inside Ukraine goes a step beyond what NATO and the Pentagon confirmed on Monday, which is that roughly 10,000 North Korean troops are training in eastern Russia with some en route to Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian troops have held territory inside Kursk since August.

“It seems that a good many of them are already in action,” one of the officials said on Tuesday, referring to the North Koreans. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that Ukrainian intelligence assessed that the troops would start to enter combat zones on Sunday.

A US official said the US can not yet corroborate reports that North Koreans troops are already inside Ukraine. The US has been playing catchup, however, when it comes to North Korea’s deployments — US officials did not confirm publicly that the troops were in Russia until weeks after South Korea first alleged it.

US and South Korean diplomatic and military officials are meeting in Washington, DC this week to discuss the deployment and North Korea’s “expanding relationship with Russia” more broadly, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

Separately, top Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak is in the US capital Tuesday for meetings with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yermak said he and Sullivan discussed the “North Korean soldiers whom Russia is preparing for war.”

South Korean officials also traveled to NATO headquarters on Monday and briefed allies on the North Korean deployments. NATO allies have been hoping that the intelligence spurs South Korea to begin providing military aid to the Ukrainians, which would be at odds with the South Koreans’ longstanding policy of not arming countries at war. But South Korea’s president has signaled an openness to changing that policy.

“While we have maintained our principle of not directly supplying lethal weapons, we can also review our stance more flexibly, depending on the level of North Korean military activities,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said last week.

It is still unclear how helpful the North Koreans will be to the Russians on the battlefield. Many of the troops deployed are special forces, the sources said, and intelligence assessments suggest that the North Korean government believes their troops have more combat power than regular Russian troops because they are better trained and specialized, officials said.

But North Korea’s military has not fought in an actual war for over 70 years, and intelligence officials believe the North Korean government sent them in large part so they could gain combat experience.

Officials also expect that at least some of the troops will desert their units once they get to the battlefield, and that the language barrier with the Russians will be a significant impediment to conducting seamless operations. The Russians have been teaching North Korean soldiers basic Russian commands in training, like “fire” and “in position,” South Korean lawmakers told reporters on Tuesday.

Some Russian troops are already raising concerns about how the North Korean soldiers will be commanded and provided with ammunition and military kit and have wondered “what the f**k to do with them,” according to audio intercepted by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence on October 23 from encrypted Russian transmission channels.

The intercepts also reveal plans to have one interpreter and three senior officers for every 30 North Korean men, CNN has reported.

‘The number may rise’

Many of the public assessments that have emerged on North Korea’s troop movements have come to light via South Korean lawmakers speaking to the media after briefings with the country’s intelligence services.

On Wednesday, two lawmakers – Lee Seong-kweun and Park Sun-won – spoke to reporters after a closed door briefing from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Their assessment was that North Korea had sent members of its elite XI Army Corps to Russia, which specialize in urban terrain and infiltration. But the DIA questioned such a unit’s effectiveness in the more open terrain of the Kursk region.

The DIA added that there was not exact information on whether North Korean troops have been sent to fighting positions, but there “is a possibility that an advance team may have been sent to the frontline,” the lawmakers said.

South Korean intelligence has put the number of North Korean troops inside Russia right now at about 13,000, higher than the US and the UK. The number could go up further — the US has already revised its assessment upward from last week, when the White House assessed that only about 3,000 North Korean troops were in Russia.

“The number may rise,” a third western official said. “Allies and partners across the globe are watching and consulting and will proactively share intelligence on the matter as it affects the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions and beyond.”

In addition to military personnel, North Korea has provided Moscow with 11,000 containers of ammunition consisting of around 2 million artillery rounds since last year, a senior NATO official told CNN earlier this month.

The US has also been urging China, which maintains a relationship with Pyongyang, to intervene and pressure the North Koreans to pull back, officials said.

Sullivan “directed the US government to engage the PRC and to organize an effort to get other countries to reach out to the PRC as well over our concerns about DPRK sending troops into Russia and the implications of that,” a US official told CNN, referring to China.

“We have communicated with the PRC about this matter to make clear that we are concerned about it, and that they ought to be concerned about this destabilizing action by two of its neighbors, Russia and North Korea,” Miller said.

Western officials are not optimistic, however, that China will intervene with North Korea’s plans, the sources said. China has continued to be a “critical enabler” of Russia’s war effort, according to the NATO official, and is still fueling Russia’s defense industry with substantial amounts of dual-use goods like microelectronics and machine tools that can be used to build weapons.

Harris’ unifying DC speech made Trump look every bit as small and divisive as he is

USA Today – Opinion

Harris’ unifying DC speech made Trump look every bit as small and divisive as he is

Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – October 30, 2024

Harris brings in thousands to DC's Ellipse, site of Trump's 2021 'Stop the Steal' rally

Let’s see if we can detect the subtle difference in our two presidential candidate’s closing messages.

Vice President Kamala Harris, before tens of thousands at the Ellipse near the White House, said Tuesday night: “The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us. And fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.”

Convicted felon Donald Trump, before a crowd of maybe 8,500 in Pennsylvania, said Tuesday night: “It’s like we’re a giant garbage can.”

Hmm. Hard to tease out the nuanced distinction between Harris’ graceful rhetoric about the greatness of our country and Trump’s “We suck.” But the difference is there, I promise.

Kamala Harris offers unity and inspiration as Donald Trump divides and demeans
Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigns at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024, to give her closing arguments before Election Day.
Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigns at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024, to give her closing arguments before Election Day.

The former president was coming off a weekend rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City that featured vile racism, profanity and enough hate speech to, I would hope, anger God. The “giant garbage can” line has become a part of his schtick, as he paints America as a crime-ridden nation overrun by immigrant gang members, rapists and murderers.

It’s all hogwash, of course, but it’s all he’s got. That and the lies he emits like a flatulent prune-farm dog.

Opinion: Trump’s racist Madison Square Garden rally was everything America shouldn’t be

Harris spoke from the same place where Trump, on Jan. 6, 2021, fomented an attack on the U.S. Capitol. The location was wholly intentional, as was her infinitely more mature and unifying message.

“America, for too long we have been consumed with too much division, chaos, and mutual distrust,” she said. “And it can be easy then to forget a simple truth: It doesn’t have to be this way. … It is time to stop pointing fingers. We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff wave to supporters after her presidential campaign speech at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024.
Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff wave to supporters after her presidential campaign speech at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024.

Chaos and mutual distrust? Conflict, fear and division?

What could she be talking about?

Trump says fellow Americans represent ‘a great evilness’

Earlier in the day, Trump said of Democrats: “This is a sick group of people, I’m telling you. There’s a great evilness. You know, we want to come together as a country, but there’s a lot of evil there.”

At his night rally in Allentown, he continued going after Democrats: “Who the hell can win an election with open borders, transgender everybody, men playing in women’s sports? … Allow millions of people through an open border totally unvetted, totally unchecked, they come from parts unknown, they come from countries you’ve never even heard of, and then you find out that they came from jails and mental institutions, no, no, they cheat like hell and it’s a damn disgrace.”

Former President Donald Trump campaigns for reelection on Oct. 29, 2024, in Allentown, Pa.
Former President Donald Trump campaigns for reelection on Oct. 29, 2024, in Allentown, Pa.

Oh, I see, that’s the fear and chaos and divsion Harris referenced.

After hearing Trump’s rambling, I wish she had said, “We have to stop pointing fingers, and also stop using run-on sentences filled with weird fabricated nonsense.”

‘As Americans, we rise and fall together’

As recently as Sunday, Trump labeled those who oppose him “the enemy from within.”

Harris, by contrast, said this from the Ellipse: “The fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within. They are family, neighbors, classmates, co-workers. They are fellow Americans, and as Americans, we rise and fall together.”

Opinion: If you think Democrats fear Trump, you should hear Republicans who worked for him

She also said: “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”

Harris’ humility vs. Trump’s hubris

Harris showed humility – something Trump is allergic to – during her speech: “Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’m not perfect. I make mistakes.”

Trump, earlier in the day Tuesday, described people who may or not exist allegedly telling him how wonderful he is: “They said he’s the greatest president we’ve ever had. And then one of them said, ‘Sir, you’re the greatest president of my lifetime.’ … I said, ‘Does that include Abe Lincoln?’ Yes, sir. ‘Does that include George Washington?’ Yes, sir. I said, ‘That’s good.’ ”

The differences are stark as day and night

Harris said: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep people divided and afraid of each other. That is who he is.”

Fact check: True.

She continued, “But America, I am here to say: That’s not who we are.”

That part will be determined next week. It’s grace vs. the garbage can.

God willing, grace prevails.

Trump Camp Attempts Damage Control After Johnson Caught Being Too Explicit About Gutting ACA

TPM

Trump Camp Attempts Damage Control After Johnson Caught Being Too Explicit About Gutting ACA

Emine Yücel – October 30, 2024

The Trump campaign continued its dance of bamboozlement on where the Republican Party actually stands when it comes to gutting the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Tuesday night, after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) acknowledged that Republicans will tackle “massive reform” of Obamacare should Donald Trump win the presidency and the GOP keep the House.

In a statement issued just after NBC News first reported on Johnson’s remarks, the campaign claimed that Trump does not support repealing the Affordable Care Act, attempting to put some distance between Trump’s vague “concepts of a plan” to supposedly improve the ACA and Johnson’s all out “no Obamacare” admission.

“This is not President Trump’s policy position,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday night. “As President Trump has said, he will make our healthcare system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options.”

Republicans’ longstanding interest in repealing the ACA is a political liability for Trump this cycle and, similar to his abortion policy positions, he’s avoided publicly endorsing anything specific about what he wants Congress to do should he win back the White House and control of the upper and lower chambers. During his first term, Trump and the all-Republican Congress attempted unsuccessfully to repeal the law.

The campaign’s clean up statement distancing Trump from Johnson comes just a day after the House Speaker indicated that Republicans are planning to either get rid of the popular ACA or substantially gut it during a campaign event in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania the Republican speaker attended for House candidate Ryan Mackenzie (R).

“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” Johnson said on Monday, according to a video obtained by NBC News.

“No Obamacare?” an event attendee asked Johnson.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded, reportedly rolling his eyes. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

“We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state. These agencies have been weaponized against the people. It’s crushing the free market; it’s like a boot on the neck of job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers. And so health care is one of the sectors, and we need this across the board,” Johnson continued. “And Trump’s going to go big. I mean, he’s only going to have one more term. Can’t run for re-election. And so he’s going to be thinking about legacy, and we’re going to fix these things.”

The 14-year-old ACA, which provides health coverage to tens of millions of Americans, has been a frequent target of Republicans.

Over the years, congressional Republicans have tried and failed to overturn Obamacare on many occasions.

During his 2016 presidential campaign Trump himself vowed to repeal Obamacare. During his presidency he tried several times to do just that, with the Senate in the summer of 2017 coming just one vote shy of overturning the ACA. Backlash to Republicans’ failed attempts to repeal the law helped Democrats take back the House in 2018. Since then, Republicans have tried to soften their stance on the issue to a position of reform over repeal.

“I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump said in a Truth Social post in November 2023.

Trump’s been vague about his position ever since. In September, during the only presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump, the former president said Republicans will replace Obamacare under a second Trump presidency.

“Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was. It’s not very good today,” Trump said during the debate. “And what I said, that if we come up with something, and we are working on things, we’re going to do it and we’re going to replace it.”

When pressed about the specifics of his replacement plan, the former president did not offer anything beyond the now-infamous allusion to having “concepts of a plan.”

Meanwhile, drawing a stark contrast, Harris and Democrats have been campaigning on protecting and expanding Obamacare, highlighting Trump and the GOP’s past efforts to revoke the health coverage program every chance they get.

Mike Johnson vows major changes to Affordable Care Act if Trump wins election

The Washington Post

Mike Johnson vows major changes to Affordable Care Act if Trump wins election

Dan Diamond – October 30, 2024

A cardboard cutout of former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wearing a Trump Force Captain hat is seen behind Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he speaks to supporters, at a Trump Force 47 campaign office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on October 28, 2024. (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM / AFP) (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images)More

House Speaker Mike Johnson pledged “massive reform” of the Affordable Care Act if Donald Trump is elected president, reopening a politically sensitive policy issue for Republicans a week before Election Day.

Johnson (R-Louisiana), who appeared at a campaign event Monday for a Republican House candidate in Pennsylvania, told attendees that GOP leaders are again weighing how to overhaul the 14-year-old law, which provides health coverage to tens of millions of Americans and has been a frequent target of Republican repeal efforts.

“Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said, wearing a personalized jacket emblazoned with the Trump-Vance campaign logo. He added that a caucus of Republican physicians has shared proposals with him and that GOP leaders hope “to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state” and “fix things.”

“No Obamacare?” an attendee asked the speaker, invoking the term popularized by Republicans to describe the health law.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

Johnson’s comments were first reported by NBC News, which published video of his remarks.

The Affordable Care Act, which Democrats enacted in 2010, has become one of the party’s more popular achievements after initially being perceived as a political liability. Sixty-two percent of adults had favorable views of the law in April, up from 38 percent a decade earlier, according to polling by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization.

The law also has transformed the nation’s health-care landscape. The White House last month touted data showing that nearly 50 million Americans have obtained health coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges since they were established more than a decade ago, helping to lower the national uninsured rate to record lows in recent years.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has promised to expand enrollment through the law if elected president.

Republicans, meanwhile, mounted dozens of efforts in Congress to overturn the law, and Trump won the presidency in 2016 by pledging to “repeal Obamacare.” But several Trump-led repeal efforts fell short – with the Senate in July 2017 coming one vote away from overturning the Affordable Care Act – and the law’s near death catalyzed new support for it.

The backlash to Republicans’ repeal efforts also helped Democrats win back control of the House in 2018, prompting GOP leaders in recent years to avoid talking about doing away with the law. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), last month even praised Trump as a good steward of the Affordable Care Act.

But Democrats remain eager to highlight Republicans’ past pledges to “repeal Obamacare,” with the Harris campaign and its allies on Tuesday night portraying Johnson’s comments as a vow to do away with the Affordable Care Act.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is making it clear – if Donald Trump wins, he and his Project 2025 allies in Congress will make sure there is ‘no Obamacare,’” Sarafina Chitika, a campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. “That means higher health-care costs for millions of families and ripping away protections from Americans with preexisting conditions like diabetes, asthma, or cancer.”

Johnson “finally told the truth about Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican allies’ agenda for health care in their first 100 days. They want to repeal the ACA,” Leslie Dach, the chairman of Protect Our Care, a Democratic-aligned health-care advocacy group, wrote in a statement.

Johnson’s office disputed Democrats’ interpretation, with a spokesman accusing Harris of “lying about Speaker Johnson” by claiming that he had pledged to repeal the law.

“The audio, transcript, and even the NBC News article her campaign cites make clear that the Speaker made no such comments,” spokesman Taylor Haulsee wrote in a statement.

Haulsee declined to comment on what health-care changes Johnson would pursue next year or whether the House speaker would rule out an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The Trump campaign said that he did not support repealing the Affordable Care Act.

“This is not President Trump’s policy position,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday night. “As President Trump has said, he will make our healthcare system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options.”

Trump has worked to downplay his past criticism of the Affordable Care Act ahead of the election, saying in a September debate that he would keep the “lousy” law in place, while acknowledging he still hopes to replace it with something “much better.” Vance recently floated a plan to roll back the law’s approach to how chronically ill people shop for health plans.

More voters side with Democrats on questions related to health-care costs and coverage, according to recent surveys. A KFF poll released in September found that 48 percent of voters trust Harris to do a better job than Trump on handling health-care costs, compared with 39 percent who favor Trump. The nine-point edge is one of Harris’s strongest advantages against Trump, who retains double-digit polling leads on the economy and immigration.

10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, inching closer to fight in Ukraine: Pentagon

The Hill

10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, inching closer to fight in Ukraine: Pentagon

Ellen Mitchell – October 28, 2024

10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, inching closer to fight in Ukraine: Pentagon

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to train in Russia with the expectation they’ll be sent to fight in Ukraine within “the next several weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday.

“We believe that the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)] has sent around 10,000 soldiers in total to train in eastern Russia that will probably augment Russian forces near Ukraine over the next several weeks,” deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Singh said a portion of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, and U.S. officials believe they are heading to the Kursk border region in Russia, where Ukrainian troops this summer launched an incursion that Kremlin forces have struggled to push back.

“It is likely that they are moving in that direction towards Kursk. But I don’t have more details just yet,” Singh said of the North Koreans.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte earlier Monday confirmed some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region — calling it a “dangerous expansion” of the conflict — but he did not say how many troops were there.

Speaking after South Korean intelligence and military officials visited NATO headquarters in Brussels, Rutte said Pyongyang’s shipment of ammunition and ballistic missiles to Russia is “fueling a major conflict in the heart of Europe.” He also called the deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea “a threat to both the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.”

The new U.S. estimate of 10,000 troops comes after Washington last week confirmed at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers were undergoing military training at multiple sites in Russia, a disclosure that followed similar intelligence reports from Kyiv and Seoul.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said Moscow plans to deploy North Koreans on the battlefield within days.

The deployment means North Korean troops soon could be on the battlefield against Ukrainian forces, adding to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. The development is also sure to exacerbate tensions with the West, in the Korean Peninsula and the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Singh said should North Korean troops show up on the front lines, there will be no limitations on the use of U.S.-provided weapons on those forces.

“If we see DPRK troops moving in and towards the front lines, they are co-belligerents in the war,” Singh said. “This is a calculation that North Korea has to make.”

The topic is all but certain to come up Wednesday when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is set to meet with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon. That is followed by Thursday talks at the State Department between Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their South Korean equivalents.

“I think you can expect this to be a topic of discussion with the secretary and his counterparts,” Singh said. “This has broad interagency implications, not just for the United States, but for, as I mentioned, Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”

Russian leaders, meanwhile, have not directly confirmed or denied the presence of the North Koreans within their borders, but have hinted at it by pointing to Moscow and Pyongyang’s new security treaty, signed in June.

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday pushed back at Western condemnations over the two countries’ cooperation, calling it an “attempt to retroactively justify” military support to Ukraine.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Atlantic Endorsement of Kamala Harris

October 29, 2024

Here is The Atlantic’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, first published on October 10, 2024. For the third time in eight years, Americans have to decide whether they want Donald Trump to be their president. No voter could be ignorant by now of who he is. Opinions about Trump aren’t just hardened—they’re dried out and exhausted. The man’s character has been in our faces for so long, blatant and unchanging, that it kills the possibility of new thoughts, which explains the strange mix of boredom and dread in our politics. Whenever Trump senses any waning of public attention, he’ll call his opponent a disgusting name, or dishonor the memory of fallen soldiers, or threaten to overturn the election if he loses, or vow to rule like a dictator if he wins. He knows that nothing he says is likely to change anyone’s views. 

Almost half the electorate supported Trump in 2016, and supported him again in 2020. This same split seems likely on November 5. Trump’s support is fixed and impervious to argument. This election, like the last two, will be decided by an absurdly small percentage of voters in a handful of states. 

Because one of the most personally malignant and politically dangerous candidates in American history was on the ballot, The Atlantic endorsed Trump’s previous Democratic opponents—only the third and fourth endorsements since the magazine’s founding, in 1857. We endorsed Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860 (though not, for reasons lost to history, in 1864).

One hundred and four years later, we endorsed Lyndon B. Johnson for president. In 2016, we endorsed Hillary Clinton for more or less the same reason Johnson won this magazine’s endorsement in 1964. Clinton was a credible candidate who would have made a competent president, but we endorsed her because she was running against a manifestly unstable and incompetent Republican nominee. The editors of this magazine in 1964 feared Barry Goldwater less for his positions than for his zealotry and seeming lack of self-restraint. 

Of all Trump’s insults, cruelties, abuses of power, corrupt dealings, and crimes, the event that proved the essential rightness of the endorsements of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden took place on January 6, 2021, when Trump became the first American president to try to overturn an election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power. 

This year, Trump is even more vicious and erratic than in the past, and the ideas of his closest advisers are more extreme. Trump has made clear that he would use a second term to consolidate unprecedented power in his own hands, punishing adversaries and pursuing a far-right agenda that most Americans don’t want. “We believe that this election is a turning-point in our history,” the magazine prophesied correctly when it endorsed Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

This year’s election is another. About the candidate we are endorsing: The Atlantic is a heterodox place, staffed by freethinkers, and for some of us, Kamala Harris’s policy views are too centrist, while for others they’re too liberal. The process that led to her nomination was flawed, and she’s been cagey in keeping the public and press from getting to know her as well as they should.

But we know a few things for sure. Having devoted her life to public service, Harris respects the law and the Constitution. She believes in the freedom, equality, and dignity of all Americans. She’s untainted by corruption, let alone a felony record or a history of sexual assault. She doesn’t embarrass her compatriots with her language and behavior, or pit them against one another. She doesn’t curry favor with dictators. She won’t abuse the power of the highest office in order to keep it. She believes in democracy. These, and not any specific policy positions, are the reasons The Atlantic is endorsing her. 

This endorsement will not be controversial to Trump’s antagonists. Nor will it matter to his supporters. But to the voters who don’t much care for either candidate, and who will decide the country’s fate, it is not enough to list Harris’s strengths or write a bill of obvious particulars against Trump. The main reason for those ambivalent Americans to vote for Harris has little to do with policy or partisanship. It’s this: Electing her and defeating him is the only way to release us from the political nightmare in which we’re trapped and bring us to the next phase of the American experiment. 

Trump isn’t solely responsible for this age of poisonous rhetoric, hateful name-calling, conspiracies and lies, divided families and communities, cowardly leaders and deluded followers—but as long as Trump still sits atop the Republican Party, it will not end. His power depends on lowering the country into a feverish state of fear and rage where Americans turn on one another. For the millions of alienated and politically homeless voters who despise what the country has become and believe it can do better, sending Trump into retirement is the necessary first step. 

If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies, but who is also offended by the rottenness of the Republican Party, only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health—then you’ll be free to oppose President Harris wholeheartedly. Like you, we wish for the return of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, a party animated by actual ideas. We believe that American politics are healthiest when vibrant conservative and liberal parties fight it out on matters of policy. 

If you’re a progressive who thinks the Democratic Party is a tool of corporate America, talk to someone who still can’t forgive themselves for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000—then ask yourself which candidate, Harris or Trump, would give you any leverage to push for policies you care about. 

And if you’re one of the many Americans who can’t stand politics and just want to opt out, remember that under democracy, inaction is also an action; that no one ever has clean hands; and that, as our 1860 editorial said, “nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers.” In other words, voting is a right that makes you responsible. 

Trump is the sphinx who stands in the way of America entering a more hopeful future. In Greek mythology, the sphinx killed every traveler who failed to answer her riddle, until Oedipus finally solved it, causing the monster’s demise. The answer to Trump lies in every American’s hands. Then he needs only to go away.

Former President Trump called fascist; what does term mean?

Ventura County Star

Former President Trump called fascist; what does term mean?

Wes Woods II, Ventura County Star – October 29, 2024

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called his former boss and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump a fascist, a term that’s getting a closer look.

Kelly is a former Marine Corps general who served as Trump’s secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. He later became Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff.

When did the controversy start?

In an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Kelly defined the term.

“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

Kelly said the definition described Trump.

“So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” he said.

Kelly added: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

President Donald Trump and White House chief of staff John Kelly in 2017.
President Donald Trump and White House chief of staff John Kelly in 2017.
Did Trump respond?

Former President Trump criticized Kelly on his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday afternoon.

“Thank you for your support against a total degenerate named John Kelly, who made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred!” Trump wrote. “John Kelly is a LOWLIFE, and a bad General, whose advice in the White House I no longer sought, and told him to MOVE ON!”

Did Harris respond?

Trump’s opponent in the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris, said she believes Kelly’s statement that the former president is a fascist.

“Yes, I do,” she said at a CNN Town Hall event with Anderson Cooper. “And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.”

What is fascism?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictonary, fascism is “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

According to the Cambridge dictionary, the word means “a political system based on a very powerful leader, state control, and being extremely proud of country and race, and in which political opposition is not allowed.”

According to dictionary.com, it means “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”

Jimmy Kimmel Makes Plea to Republicans Ahead of Election: “This Is About Sanity and Security and Democracy”

The Hollywood Reporter

Jimmy Kimmel Makes Plea to Republicans Ahead of Election: “This Is About Sanity and Security and Democracy”

Carly Thomas – October 29, 2024

Jimmy Kimmel kicked off his latest episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! with a message directly for moderate Republicans.

Ahead of the show, the host posted on social media, asking for people to “ask a Republican you love” to watch Wednesday night, as he has a “special monologue” for them.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

“I assume you’re watching this because you care about the person who asked you to watch it, or maybe you’re just open-minded and not afraid to hear somebody who might not agree with you speak,” Kimmel said to kick off the show. “Either way, thank you for giving me 15 minutes of your life to talk about Donald Trump. Maybe you love him, and you’ll vote for him no matter what he says or what he does. Maybe you hate the other side so much you’ll look past anything he says or does. Or maybe there’s a little voice in the back of your head saying, ‘I might not want this guy driving the bus.’”

The host continued, “But what I’m asking you to hear isn’t what I have to say, that doesn’t matter. I want you to hear what he’s saying. Most Americans — and you are probably one of them — don’t have time to watch his rallies and his speeches and all the interviews. because you have other things to do. But I don’t have other things to do. This is all I have to do. And because I don’t have other things to do, I’ve seen all or at least part of every interview, every speech, every all-caps social media post from this man for the past nine years.”

Over the nearly 20-minute monologue on Wednesday’s episode, Kimmel made a point to only “focus on words that came out of his [Trump’s] mouth.” He played dozens of clips of the former president making comments about a range of topics, including his health care plan he’s been teasing since 2016, childcare, windmills as well as things that are “not real.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be running for President? Aren’t you supposed to be worried about important topics? Kimmel asked at one point. “And here’s the thing, it’s kind of funny, these silly, random rants of his, and it would be fine if he was hosting a podcast or selling knives at the farmers market. But he’s supposed to be leading us. People are listening to him and the country is getting crazier because he makes it OK to be nuts.”

Later, the host emphasized how presidents typically don’t sell products. However, there’s one “who sells a lot of them.” Kimmel proceeded to show a video montage of all of Trump’s ads for products he sells, including Trump coins, coffee table book, trading cards and a “God Bless the USA” bible, among others.

After also noting that several Republicans and former Trump administration members have confessed they’re not endorsing Trump this election, Kimmel began to wrap up his monologue with a message.

“Either he doesn’t care about the truth or he has a hard time understanding what the truth is. Both very bad options!” he said. “So now we have an election on Tuesday, and Trump has made it very clear that if he wins, it was an honest election. And if he loses, it was a rigged election.”

Kimmel continued, “He has no plan to lower grocery prices or to make us safer or to protect the border. The only plans he has is to file lawsuits, legal challenges, settle scores and punish his enemies. … He wants to turn it into ‘Of me, by me, for me.’”

“Listen, politics in a lot of ways is like sports. You probably just root for the team your dad roots for. Maybe you’ve been a Republican your whole life. That’s your team and it feels wrong not to vote for them. But this time around, you wouldn’t be alone. You have a lot of company,” he added. “Most elections are about policy. This one is not. This is about sanity and security and democracy.”

Listen to Kimmel’s full monologue

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

Column: Listen to Trump’s former aides: He’d be far more dangerous in a second term

Los Angeles Times

Column: Listen to Trump’s former aides: He’d be far more dangerous in a second term

Doyle McManus – October 28, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures at a campaign rally at Mullett Arena, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in Tempe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Donald Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted,” his former chief of staff said. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

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Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, broke a long silence and denounced his former boss as a man who fits “the general definition of fascist.”

The conservative, normally taciturn Kelly was moved to speak out after Trump condemned former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Adam B. Schiff and other Democrats as “the enemy from within” and said he would deploy troops onto the nation’s streets to suppress opposition.

“Using the military on, to go after, American citizens is … a very, very bad thing,” Kelly told the New York Times. “Even to say it for political purposes to get elected, I think it’s a very, very bad thing.”

Kelly wasn’t the only former Trump aide to warn that the GOP candidate shouldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. Dozens of people who worked in senior positions in the Trump administration have chimed in. Gen. Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him “fascist to the core … the most dangerous person to the country.” Former national security advisor John Bolton said he was “unfit to be president.”

Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted,” Kelly said.

Did those warnings from authoritative sources — eminent figures Trump once appointed to high-ranking jobs — have any effect on his voters as election day approaches?

Read more: Column: The presidential race won’t be over on election night. Here’s what can go wrong after that

Not as far as anyone can tell.

Readers of this column won’t be surprised to learn that I agree wholeheartedly with Kelly, Milley, Bolton and their colleagues: Trump is a danger to our democracy.

He neither understands nor respects the Constitution. He yearns openly to rule the way China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin do, as an autocrat answerable to no one. “He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” he said admiringly of Xi.

Trump revels in divisiveness and cruelty. And his economic “program,” which boils down to massive tariffs on imports plus unlimited drilling for oil and gas, would be disastrous.

Why do millions of voters — many of them, as Trump might put it, very fine people — blow past the warnings of figures like Kelly, Milley and Bolton?

Over the last year, I’ve listened to dozens of Trump voters describe their reasons for sticking with him.

Read more: Column: Trumponomics? He would impose the equivalent of a huge tax hike

Some, his hardcore base, agree with everything the former president says right down to the coarsest insults.

Others admit to qualms about Trump’s style but say they support him because they hope he can bring back the low-inflation prosperity of his first two years in office.

But a third group, which includes many independents as well as moderate Republicans, is the most perplexing. Not only do they dislike Trump’s style, they worry about some of his positions: his desire to unravel Obamacare, his threats to deploy the military against domestic opponents, his indiscriminate tariffs, his plan to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists.

But many say they don’t think Trump would — or could — actually make those things happen.

In a focus group last week organized for NBC News by the public opinion consulting firm Engagious, for example, an Atlanta home inspector named Kevin said he worried that Trump’s tariffs would make consumer prices go up.

“It’s a bad idea,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere. I think it’ll cost too much money. It’ll be too difficult politically.” He’ll probably vote for Trump anyway, he said.

Read more: Kamala Harris’ politics of joy give way to a closing pitch focused on fear

Pollsters have called this Trump’s “believability gap.” Voters hear what he says, but they discount it — they think that “he’s just talking” or that surely somebody will stop his more outlandish ideas.

But there are two problems with those Trump voters’ self-comforting rationalizations.

The first is that Trump already has a track record of trying to do most of those things. He tried to repeal Obamacare, but a handful of moderate Republican senators got in his way. He issued an executive order that would have enabled him to replace civil servants with political appointees, but time ran out on his term before he could use it.

And when demonstrators assembled across the street from the White House, he urged military officials to deploy troops and shoot protesters in the legs — but Gen. Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper stopped him.

“When he starts talking about using the military against people … I think we should take that very seriously,” Olivia Troye, who served as an aide to Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, told my colleague Noah Bierman recently. “He actually talked about shooting Americans. I was there … I witnessed that.”

The second problem with the “believability gap” is that if Trump gets back to the White House, he will be more likely to get his way.

He has frequently complained that he made a mistake in his first term by appointing aides like Kelly, Milley and Bolton, who believed it was their duty to restrain the president’s ill-considered impulses. If he gets a second term, he’ll surround himself with more people who will do his bidding without raising pesky questions.

Read more: Column: Trump wants to turn the federal bureaucracy into an ‘army of suck-ups.’ Here’s how that would be a disaster

He’ll run into less opposition from other institutions too.

Republicans in Congress, who occasionally restrained Trump when he was president, have purged most of the moderates from their ranks. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is retiring. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an occasional Trump critic, will no longer be his party’s leader in the Senate.

Federal courts may be more hospitable, too, thanks to judges Trump appointed his first time around.

So moderate Republicans and independents who are tempted to vote for Trump because they hope he will lower taxes or improve the economy should think long and hard about the risks of that bargain.

Read more: Column: With Harris and Trump, voters face a stark choice on foreign policy — and it’s not about Gaza

When Trump says he’ll order prosecutors to go after Joe Biden and “the Pelosis,” he means it. When Trump says he’ll punish businesses like Amazon if he doesn’t like their owners’ views, he means it. When Trump says he believes the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president,” he means it.

And this time, he would know better how to turn his wishes into reality. A second Trump term wouldn’t be a benign rerun of the first version. As his former aides are trying their best to warn us, it would be far worse.