How can the foreign policy elites be taken seriously now – even by themselves? President Trump just did every single thing that you’re not supposed to do, and it worked. First, he answered North Korea’s missile test provocations with louder provocations, and then publicly belittled their leader as “Rocket Man.” What was the reaction of the foreign policy experts to the President’s truth-telling at the United Nations? They were shocked, shocked at Trump’s lack of couth. They were upset that he was not polite enough to the most repressive regime on earth. Richard Haass, in particular, was worried on every cable news channel appearance about what he heard from our allies at cocktail parties and polo matches. The entire global order was in peril, according to very wise men like John Kerry and James Fallows.

It turns out that very wise men like Kerry and Fallows and Haass know less than zero. Meanwhile, the President and his new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, ran the old “good cop, bad cop” routine to perfection. The Supreme Leader of North Korea, a basketball-loving tyrant running a prison camp country, was forced to blink in Singapore and decided to take the off-ramp away from war with the United States. Was the Trump Administration really about to bomb Pyongyang back into the Stone Age? It turns out that no one had the stomach to find out, and so Kim Jong-un folded at the Capella Hotel with a smile and a handshake.