Here’s the missing second part of the monologue heard ’round the conservative world on Friday. Beck gave two reasons for joining MAGA Nation: One was policy but the other, which he led with, was wanting to spite a dishonest media that had distorted Trump’s “animals” comment about MS-13 and the nature of the Hamas-led riots at the Israeli border in the span of about 72 hours. He was fed up. Supporting Trump made him feel good by striking back against that dishonesty. Make the libs cry!

But he had substantive reasons too, which he lays out below. All are familiar, although surprisingly he (a) doesn’t stress Neil Gorsuch or the economy, surely the biggest factor in Trump’s rising poll numbers (maybe Beck thinks it’s silly to credit a president with the state of the economy, good or bad?), and (b) seems to think moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is easily the most momentous thing Trump has done as president. He’s in full Fox-News-era-chalkboard mode on that one: Somehow the embassy will trigger riots in Iran, which will destabilize the Iranian government, then Trump will say something stirring to the Iranian people, then, before you know it — regime change. There’s an unmistakable “underpants gnome” vibe to his reasoning. Why not just appreciate the embassy move as an important symbolic gesture that shows the U.S. supports Israeli sovereignty and won’t let Muslim sensitivities determine how it conducts its own foreign policy?

He also flags the negotiations with North Korea as a major Trump win, which most Americans would agree with, but hedges at the end by noting there’s no telling which way that’ll go. He ain’t kidding:

President Trump, increasingly concerned that his summit meeting in Singapore next month with North Korea’s leader could turn into a political embarrassment, has begun pressing his aides and allies about whether he should take the risk of proceeding with a historic meeting that he had leapt into accepting, according to administration and foreign officials…

Mr. Trump’s aides have grown concerned that the president — who has said that “everyone thinks” he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts — has signaled that he wants the summit meeting too much. The aides also worry that Mr. Kim, sensing the president’s eagerness, is prepared to offer assurances that will fade over time…

The aides are also concerned about what kind of grasp Mr. Trump has on the details of the North Korea program, and what he must insist upon as the key components of denuclearization. Mr. Moon and his aides reported that Mr. Kim seemed highly conversant with all elements of the program when the two men met, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made similar comments about Mr. Kim, based on his two meetings with him in Pyongyang, the North’s capital.

Korean analyst Robert Kelly (yes, *that* Robert Kelly) had a smart read on Trump’s predicament this morning too. A few bits:

2a) Moon likely exaggerated this to tie Trump to a diplomatic track to prevent him from backsliding into last year’s war-threats which scared the daylights out of South Koreans. If Trump were less vain and had allowed his national security staff to vet the NK offer, he might have

— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) May 21, 2018

4) It is an open secret in Korea that this was just flattering Trump to prevent him from starting a war. No one actually believes it. My students & colleagues laugh at the suggestion. No one thought the western media wd actually start seriously debating it. Trump is loathed here.

— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) May 21, 2018

6b) of the summit process is in the 90s%. So if you are a NK hawk, Trump's rhetoric last year made things worse, not better, by scaring up a dovish consensus for Moon to make concessions and keep Trump at bay.

— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) May 21, 2018

Trump got Kim to the bargaining table by spooking the South Koreans so badly that they were willing to make concessions to the North. Then Trump himself agreed to come to the bargaining table, something Bush or Obama could have done but for which they would have been pilloried by Republican hawks. I think Trump’s offer of direct negotiations was defensible since we’re at the eleventh hour in stopping the NorK program — all options are on the table, from war to presidential diplomacy — but the idea that Kim has somehow been intimidated into disarming is wrong. It’s more the opposite, per today’s news: Trump may have realized less a month out from the summit that Kim really has no such intentions (and that “the Libya model” is completely unfeasible in this case) and now he’s caught between attending a summit that’ll probably fail and walking away, with unpredictable results.

Here’s Beck. If he’s at this point already, I’m legit excited for his monologues circa summer 2020 making the case that Trump is kinda sorta another George Washington.