When President Donald Trump called North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un “Little Rocket Man” and said that his nuclear button was bigger than Kim’s and it worked, the mainstream media went ballistic and said that Trump was starting a nuclear war.

The mainstream media also said that Kim would never come to the negotiating table with Trump after those insulting comments and that Kim might attack Guam.

As late as last week, mainstream media pundits were saying that the meeting would never take place.

Once again the mainstream media let their hatred of Trump get in the way of reporting the news. And Trump proved to the mainstream media that he knows way more about negotiating than they do.

A couple of weeks ago when Trump cancelled the meeting in Singapore, the mainstream media said, we told you so; the meeting will never take place.

Those whose eyes were not blinded by hate saw the cancellation as what it was – a negotiating tactic. Some of the statements out of North Korea had gone too far. Trump was sending a message loud and clear to Kim that he would meet but not if Kim’s goal was to humiliate him.

Kim got the message and now Trump has done something no previous president has been able to do – he met with the leader of North Korea and they signed an agreement. In this case, it doesn’t make much difference what the agreement says. The point was to start negotiations.

The strategy of former President Barack Obama was appeasement. Obama put meaningless sanctions on North Korea and allowed Kim to continue his ballistic missile and nuclear weapon program, which is why North Korea now has both intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

No one outside of North Korea knows for sure whether Kim has been able to miniaturize his nuclear bombs to the point that they could be delivered by a missile, but the heavy lifting on all of that has been done because previous presidents allowed it.

Trump says that Kim is open to denuclearization. No doubt Trump made it clear what North Korea stood to gain by becoming a member of the world community. Trump has said that if North Korea continued to be defiant he would have no choice but to obliterate it. Kim – who has had many of his rivals, including family members, killed – evidently understands that concept.

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If the news media were not full of fake news like Trump says that they are, the headline story would have been about New York Times reporter Ali Watkins buying classified documents from James Wolfe, the head of security for the Senate Intelligence committee, and paying for those documents with sex.

It’s life imitating art. Replace the head of security with a congressman, and The Washington Post with The New York Times, and you have the Netflix series House of Cards.

The reality is that 22-year-old women do not choose to have sex with dumpy men in their 50s because they find them physically attractive. James Wolfe didn’t have much going for him except that he had access to all the classified documents that came to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

When their affair started, Watkins was still a college student who wanted to be a big time reporter. She evidently wanted it so badly that she was willing to sell herself for classified documents, and it worked.She moved up from BuzzFeed to The New York Times while still in her early 20s because she had information that nobody else could get.

The fact that she still works at The New York Times and has not been fired is an indication of just how far the mighty has fallen. The New York Times used to have integrity. One has to wonder if The New York Times would fire a reporter for paying cash for classified documents.

There was no way that Wolfe was going to get an attractive 22-year-old woman to have sex with him without paying in some form or another. He paid with something far more valuable than money to a young reporter who wanted to make it to the big time. The fact that he had to violate the law to do it made the information even more valuable.

Now Wolfe is facing prison and Watkins still has her job at The New York Times. It hardly seems fair.

But the story has everything – intrigue, sex and leaking documents that have changed the course of the nation. Who knows, if Wolfe had not leaked the documents about Trump campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page to Watkins, then the whole Russia collusion probe might have taken a different turn.

The New York Times uses the euphemism “romantic relationship” to describe the relationship between Watkins and Wolfe. That’s not the term The New York Times used to describe the relationship that former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer had with the women he was paying to have sex with.

Watkins and Wolfe had a business deal that involved Wolfe illegally providing Watkins with classified documents to further her career and Watkins providing Wolfe with sex.

If The New York Times would like to regain the prestige it once had, when one of its employees gets caught in a sex for hire scandal, it can’t fall back on euphemisms like “romantic relationship.”

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Trump got Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table – something no other American president has been able to do because the previous American presidents were scared to death of Kim. They were afraid he would launch a nuclear strike if they didn’t give him what he wanted, so he got what he wanted and developed nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The difference is that while other presidents were scared to death of Kim, now the tables are turned and Kim is scared to death of Trump. Kim has good reason to be scared of Trump, because Trump has made it crystal clear that, if Kim misbehaves, Trump will annihilate his country and Kim with it.

Kim isn’t 100 percent sure that Trump would do such a thing and so they are meeting. In that meeting Trump should let Kim know that Kim can either join the rest of the world or he can be blown to smithereens, but he isn’t going to be allowed to sit there in North Korea by himself and threaten the peace of the rest of the world because Trump won’t allow it.

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Trump is using his power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes and the mainstream media are up in arms, along with Democrats.

Where was the outrage from the Democrats and the mainstream media when Bill Clinton in his last days in office was pardoning people right and left?

He pardoned Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory, who paid over $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham.

He also pardoned Almon Glenn Braswell, who paid $200,000 to Hillary Clinton’s brother Hugh Rodham. When it was reported in the news that he had been paid $200,000, Hugh Rodham returned the money, but Braswell was still pardoned.

Bill Clinton also pardoned Marc Rich, who had fled the country because he was found to have not paid $48 million in federal income tax. Rich’s wife donated heavily to the Clinton presidential library and to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign and Marc Rich got his pardon.

There is no doubt that Bill Clinton was selling pardons. He wasn’t taking the money directly because Bill Clinton is smart. It is not illegal to pay someone to lobby for a pardon, but it is highly unethical to pay a member of the president’s family to lobby for a pardon. Did Hugh and Tony Rodham have any particular influence other than being the brothers of the first lady? Did they present any new evidence or reasons to pardon people other than they had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Imagine if it were discovered that Dinesh D’Souza had paid Melania Trump’s mother $200,000 for her to lobby Trump for a pardon, the mainstream media would demand that Trump be immediately impeached. And because the Republicans in Congress have little backbone and are scared to death of the media, it might happen.

Trump is pardoning people he wants to pardon and is not doing it at the end of his second term like Bill Clinton. He is not halfway through his first term, so if people don’t like it they can vote for someone else in 2020.

But my prediction is that by 2020, because he is changing Washington and doing what he said he would do on the campaign trail, that Trump will be nearly unbeatable.

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The mainstream media have been poking fun at Trump for the audacious statement that he could pardon himself. I am not an attorney, and I don’t play one on TV. But the Constitution on this point appears unequivocal.

The Constitution in Article II Section 2 states about the president, “he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

I don’t see any restriction in that clause about who the president can pardon, when he can pardon them, where he can pardon them or why he can pardon them. It is clear that he can’t pardon himself from Impeachment, but the very fact that impeachment is in there indicates to me that he could pardon himself for any other offense he committed against the United States.

The Constitution was written in a different time and written by people who had grown up living under the rule of a king. It states, for instance, in the Constitution about representatives and senators, “They shall in all cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses; and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

So a congressman or senator can’t be arrested on their way to the House or Senate or even going home from the House or Senate. Imagine if this clause didn’t exist and Trump had all the Democratic senators arrested by the FBI on their way to the Senate so that he could get Obamacare repealed or the funding for his wall. The FBI could detain them long enough for the vote and then release them all. People get arrested and released all the time.

But could you imagine the outcry and political turmoil that would result? Even if the law didn’t exist, in modern times I don’t think any president, House speaker or Senate majority leader would attempt such a move because the public would be outraged. But at the time the Constitution was written it was a serious enough concern to be included in the relatively short document that rules the country.

In that light it seems reasonable to assume that the founders also believed that the president might be charged with crimes and need to pardon himself to prevent a constitutional crisis.

In any case, it is not an unreasonable interpretation of that clause of the Constitution.

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Every time Trump talks about tariffs, the mainstream media predict economic disaster. So far it hasn’t happened. What has happened is Trump has gotten concessions on trade from other countries.

Walk softly and carry a big stick is good advice, but Trump doesn’t like to walk softly. Trump likes to holler at other countries about the huge stick he has.

No other country wants to be in a trade war with the US because the US has the largest economy in the world.

President Obama, and before him President George W. Bush, appeared to be terrified of a trade war. Why should the US be terrified of a war that the US is going to win?

If the US actually imposed the tariffs that Trump is proposing, it would cause great economic hardship for those countries and some economic issues for the US, but nothing like the other countries would suffer. Where is China going to sell all of the stuff it makes if it gets in a trade war with the US?

What Trump is doing is business 101. You don’t start out with your best offer. Trump likes to start out with a proposal that gets people’s attention. So far he’s been threatening tariffs all over the place for months. He’s already gotten a lot of concessions as far as US trade goes. If China expects to be able to sell its products in the US, then the US should be able to sell its products under the same conditions in China. That seems only fair.

The same goes for US allies. If other countries are going to create a barrier for US goods, whether it is through tariffs, currency manipulation or government subsidies, then they should expect the same kind of treatment from the US regarding their products.

What Trump is doing is opening markets for US goods. It has a lot of people nervous because they want things to stay the way they are now. Trump wants them to be better for American products overseas. So far he has been successful, just by talking about tariffs.

No doubt before long, some country is going to call Trump’s bluff and they will find out that it isn’t a bluff. He’s willing to accept some short-term economic loss in exchange for his long-term goals, which is to open foreign markets to US goods.

Some pundit said that the US shouldn’t insist on free trade because it would hurt some economically disadvantaged countries. Whether this is true or not, the president’s first responsibility is to the American people, not citizens of other countries. If American trade practices help Americans and hurt people in other countries, so be it. Let their leaders take care of them and let our leaders take care of us.

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Economically and militarily the US is by far the most powerful nation in the world. Past presidents have wanted to act like we were just one of the guys. Trump doesn’t. The US has allowed unfair trade practices because we could absorb the loss. Trump doesn’t see things that way.

One reason that European countries and Japan have been able to put so much money into their economies is that the US covers most of the cost of their military defense. That made a lot of sense following World War II. The US didn’t want to see big military buildups in Germany or Japan. Great Britain, France, Italy and other European nations had suffered a tremendous amount of damage during the war and the US had not. The big threat then was the USSR, which doesn’t exist anymore.

Germany’s economy is currently about four times that of Russia, and by comparison the US economy is almost five times larger than Germany’s, which tells you something about how powerful Russia is compared to the US.

In fact, the US economy is larger than the six other nations of the G7 combined. So who should be dictating what to whom? Trump believes that as the largest economy in the world the US should do a better job of throwing its weight around.

At the G7, Trump said, if you want free trade, let’s have free trade – but that doesn’t mean that the US doesn’t charge tariffs and all of you other countries do; it means no tariffs on US goods the US exports and no tariffs on goods coming into the US.

The idea that the US would not charge tariffs on goods coming into the country and allow those same countries to put tariffs on goods coming from the US doesn’t make sense, but it is what the US has allowed for years, as if we would be the ones to suffer in a trade war.

In the US we can live with a 50 percent increase in the price of French wine, Mercedes, Scotch, Maple syrup, Ferraris, and Toyotas, but can any other those countries survive with the increased prices of their goods in the US?

Trump doesn’t think so.

Trump spent over a year running around the country saying that he was going to make America great again. Now he is doing it and, of course, Trump haters of both parties are aghast that any US president would put America first.

Canada places a 270 percent tariff on dairy products from the US. How is that fair to US dairy farmers?

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I was disappointed in the G7 meeting in Quebec. The best part of these summits is when all the world leaders put on silly looking clothes and line up for their photos. They could have all worn Canadian Mountie red coats and smoky bear hats. They could have all worn hockey jerseys. They could have all put on big fake eyebrows like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But instead they just lined up in their own old boring clothes and had their photo taken.

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Since the US allows the European Union seats at the G7 meetings, the rest of the countries should give California a seat at the table. The economy of California is the sixth largest in the world and is bigger than that of France, Italy and Canada.

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Poor ole Bill Clinton. He is like someone who escaped from prison 20 years ago and suddenly finds the cops at his door.

Bill Clinton thought he had escaped all of that stuff about forcing himself on women in the White House, having an affair with a White House intern and exposing himself to a low-level Arkansas state employee when he was governor, and raping another woman when he was attorney general.

Clinton has been out on the public stage for decades now and the mainstream media never brought it up. It has been rarely mentioned by the mainstream media that Clinton is the only elected president to have been impeached in the 240-year history of the country, much less that 50 senators voted to remove him from office.

And the mainstream media are caught in their own trap. The most important story out there according to the mainstream media is the #metoo movement, and what shocked Bill Clinton is that the #metoo movement trumped their eternal love and adoration of all things Clinton.

So now he is being forced to answer the uncomfortable questions he should have been asked 20 years ago.

While he was running for president it was revealed that he had had a long-term affair with Gennifer Flowers. He apologized for a recording of a telephone conversation with her without explaining why he would have had such a conversation with someone he hardly knew. He was given a pass on Gennifer Flowers.

And for the past 20 years he has been given a pass on his behavior toward women, which has been abominable. Now it seems his friends in the media want answers, and his answers go from bad to worse.

If the women are always to be believed, like Hillary Clinton said, then Bill Clinton is guilty of raping of Juanita Broaddrick. She told people about the rape right after it happened, which seems to be one of the deciding factors in whether women are embellishing stories or not. Broaddrick has no proof, but Hillary Clinton said that she is to be believed.

Monica Lewinsky provided the proof of their affair herself, and up until that moment Bill Clinton denied it.

Maybe this will be the final straw that pushes the Clintons off the national stage. Even diehard Democrats have to be tired of hearing Hillary Clinton whining about losing the presidential election and blaming it on everyone but herself.

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If the NCAA and other athletic associations don’t face reality soon, women’s athletics will be a thing of the past. In the Connecticut state high school track meet, a biological male won and set records in both the 100 and 200 meter races. What makes this ever so interesting is that this biological male, who now thinks of himself as a woman, competed in the indoor track events this year as a male.

Men in general are bigger, stronger and faster than women. If there was a single woman in the WNBA who could make an NBA team she would be playing in the NBA because those players make 10, 20, 30 times more money than the women in the WNBA – but there isn’t.

If the high school and college athletic associations continue to ignore reality so that they can be politically correct, women’s athletics will be dominated by biological males. According to those in favor of gender fluidity, and I admit I’m not sure what that means, Andraya Yearwood, having now won the events and set records in the state track meet, can decide to go back to being a male for the summer. Next year Yearwood could do the same thing, competing as a male during the indoor season and a female during the outdoor season. Or Yearwood could do the opposite and compete as a female during the indoor season and a male during the outdoor season.

The reason that there are sports for females separate from sports for males is because, if there were not, very few females would get to compete.

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This is one that continues to baffle me. Now Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee Ron Johnson is asking the FBI for some explanation of why redactions were made in the text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page.

Some redactions seem to have been made to avoid embarrassment and not to reveal the names of those involved. Johnson has reportedly sent a letter asking for an explanation.

What baffles me is why Trump hasn’t stepped into this mess by ordering the Justice Department, including the FBI, to provide to Congress with all the documents that Congress requests that Congress is entitled to have. Period.

It is absurd for the Justice Department, headed by Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to be playing games with Republican congressional oversight committees, not providing them with documents and providing them with documents so redacted that they are meaningless.

Still, the best example of abuse is redacting the $70,000 cost of the conference table for fired FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe’s office. Now it makes sense to redact that if your goal is to protect McCabe from further criticism from Congress, but items are only supposed to be redacted for national security reasons, not to protect friends.

Sessions should not allow it and Trump should not allow Sessions to allow it.