8/20/26: Trump Bond Crisis Worsens, North Korea Humiliates Trump With Missile Launch

23:08New cameras, something like that, if you have to buy it on the finger. I don't know. And so that's the type of stuff which actually has a much more shrinking effect to the U.S. economy. restaurants, whether you're going to do a small business loan, even a normal loan that people take out for ordinary capital expenditure purposes, that's what gets screwed. So the tech people can afford the high interest rate. It's average small business owner who absolutely cannot, and that kills your expansion period. So that, I think, is the biggest cooling effect on hiring as well as, like you said, at the personal level, whenever it comes to personal debt like car loans and or house loans.

23:47None of it good. None of it good. Okay, let's get to North Korea. What if feeling better was as easy as your first sip of coffee? With Zend Wellness, feeling better can be part of your morning routine. Zend Wellness believes wellness should fit naturally into everyday life, not feel like one more thing on your list. That's why Zend Wellness created Metaglow, a daily collagen supplement with four clinically supported ingredients designed to support metabolic wellness and help you feel more in control of your day. Just stir one scoop into your coffee, tea, or smoothie and start simple. Start your routine today at zendwellness.com and get up to 33 % off your first order.

24:28That's z-e-n-d wellness.com. Zend Wellness. Feeling better starts with one simple step. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

25:17They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

25:55I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite BookTok creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

26:34See you between the pages.

27:04On the screen, the Prime Minister's office of Japan releasing a statement this morning showing that there has now been suspected missile launches by North Korea. They say that, quote, provisional translation, but this is what they put out, ensuring the safety of aircraft vessels and other assets. They also put out another statement that it looks like roughly 10 different short-range ballistic missiles were fired by North Korea in the vicinity of Japan. And not exactly like new news, but you should pay attention because this is what they use to compel diplomacy and to shape these talks with the United States.

27:37It comes on the heels of Trump trying to create space for a grand diplomatic summit with North Korea, just like he did with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018. But this time around, the North, in terms of their demands, are much higher for what any sort of bilateral meeting actually would look like. here's Trump try to lay the ground and then I'm going to give you the truth. B2, let's take a listen. You said North Korea has something like 57 nuclear weapons. They've been expanding their nuclear program. Is your goal in trying to re-engage with Chairman Kim still denuclearization? What makes you think you could be successful now when you weren't?

28:14Well, I don't want to talk about that, but I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un, as you know, you've seen. he didn't like Biden he didn't like Obama he didn't like anybody but he likes me and I like you know I just got along with him very good we had great meetings we speak and I think our nation and I think other nations frankly whether it's Japan or South Korea they're a lot safer if I'm president than if somebody else is president it's always very funny that he thinks that Kim Jong-un likes him and didn't like Biden or Obama Kim Jong-un doesn't care or think about any of those people the only thing he cares about is dying filthy rich in his mansion and keeping the 57 nuclear weapons that he has.

28:58And to show you how delusional Trump is because he wants this imagery of meeting with Kim, which at this point I think the North Koreans understand, and that's why their demands are so much higher. Let's put B3 up here on the screen. Trump still has the same policy as Biden and Obama, which is total denuclearization. So let's read. President Trump is pushing aides for a meeting as soon as this fall with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, seeking to revive dramatic diplomatic quest from his first term to convince Kim to abandon his country's nuclear weapons program. Trump has privately discussed setting up this in-person discussion on his next trip to Asia.

29:36And while Trump sees another one-on-one as a chance to reopen dialogue, quote, analysts and officials said they don't expect much progress because Kim wields a nuclear arsenal that has not only grown stronger and more capable of striking the U.S. since Trump and Kim's previous three summits. That's actually why I think this is all so ridiculous, is Donald Trump, in the midst of a war where he tried to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, struck them under the guise of diplomacy, failed to do so, failed to do regime change, and affirmed the strategic logic of Kim Jong-il and his father for pursuing a nuclear weapons program in the first place, which is, you will make us untouchable.

30:23And you, the American president, you will meet me as a peer nuclear weapons power, and I will demand what I want. You can keep your piddly denuclearization talks out because we don't care and we have more nukes than we could ever need to eviscerate your entire homeland. And yet, because in America we've been bombarded with all this propaganda and all this like, oh, famine. And all of that is true, but it does not belie the strategic logic. They have nukes. They can wipe our cities off the map. Thus, we have to deal with that reality. They get to make demands. And it's like we're still living in this total fantasy with Donald Trump.

31:04Yeah. And that's why I just find this so preposterous. And if anything, you know, Kim is humiliating him by now shooting these missiles at Japan by being like, yeah, man, we don't care about your dumb ass summits or your joint military exercises. Like we have nukes, dude. Like you're going to meet me. And at the end of the day, you'll remove the sanctions or not. But my nukes not going anywhere. If anything, we're building more tomorrow. It is hilarious that Trump imagines at this moment in time when they have never been more vindicated. Again, this is not a moral judgment. This is just a reality check.

31:39They have never been more vindicated. And there has never been more clear-cut logic in favor of not just North Korea, but Iran and South Korea and all kinds of other countries around the world. Also, Saudi Arabia also acquiring nuclear weapons because of the logic we ourselves have created in the world. And you think that is the moment when North Korea is going to say, you know what? You're right. I'm going to give up my nuclear weapon. Zero chance. Zero percent chance. Not only that, we covered how North Korea economically, they're doing pretty well. They're having some significant growth. They have, I mean, they've effectively waited us out.

32:16Remember when we did that article how they have more housing than the city of Chicago? Yes. In Pyongyang? Yes. You're like, I don't know. I don't even know what to say about this. Yeah, no, that's right. And again, not to like, we're not trying to sugarcoat things here or whatever, but they've found two partners in China and Russia that have turned out to be very beneficial. And they've found ways to also contribute to those relationships with Russia. Again, these are not moral judgments. This is just reality. With Russia, they have sent their own troops as effectively mercenaries into Ukraine, been very valuable there.

32:48They've also helped with industrial production for Russia. They have millions of weapons, the fifth largest military in the world. Exactly. Exactly. So they have and they've so they've earned all kinds of money from that. But they're now investing in housing and all kinds of things internally so that they're trying to make it so that there isn't so much wealth just concentrated in Pyongyang, that that wealth is spread more throughout the country. So economically, the picture is pretty good for them. They've got two pretty powerful allies in China and Russia. And so why at this moment would they come and do anything that we want them to do?

33:21So their response to Trump's reduction of these military exercises was, number one, we have a great personal relationship and friendship with Trump, you know, playing to his ego. But number two, we don't really care that you reduce the military actions. It means nothing to us whatsoever. And as a show of strength, we're going to go ahead and do one of our missile launches. So it's just, you know, it's really silly. And I think it, to me, reads as desperate. it. Trump sees what an L he has taken on Iran. He's desperately trying to figure out some kind of a win that he can get on the global stage.

34:00This kind of worked for him in the past. I think he genuinely does like Kim Jong-un and thinks that maybe. And he is so delusional about his own powers of negotiation and persuasion that he thinks perhaps this is some sort of a win that he could get on the global stage. And let me be clear, I support the idea of being less militaristic. I think that's going to be a necessity in terms of how we move forward in the world after this demonstration of incredible weakness in the Iran war. So I supported the original meetings with North Korea. I support figuring out how to coexist with the other nations of the world, whether they're doing things we like or don't like or whatever, in terms of their internal domestic politics, but he is living in such a delusion to imagine that he has any position to demand anything from North Korea.

34:47That's my thing, too. I'm with you. I vehemently defended the original summit, which, man, if the young kids today who weren't paying attention to politics, they were like, oh, he's meeting with a brutal dictator. I'm like, yeah, the guy's got a nuclear weapon. That's how it works. Sorry. You know, like, what do you want us to do? Lose Hawaii? I'll keep Hawaii. Thank you very much. And or Los Angeles. I'd rather make sure that they don't get wiped off the face of the earth. Oh, and make sure that we, you know, listen, I mean, Seoul and everybody living in South Korea has been living in terror and fear since 1950.

35:18Like, it's actually insane that North Koreans have the ability, well, there's sarin gas and chem of VX and the conventional artillery. Nukes aside, they could destroy the city of Seoul in 45 minutes. I was reading some of the work. It's terrifying what they were living underneath. Let's keep them safe. We can keep our economies well integrated. They're a great ally. Let's have good relations with the North. We don't have to keep them. We don't have to have that missiles and carriers and all this other crap, which is over there just to stop North Korea, let alone what's happening with China. But in this case, what Trump has done is he's actually being forced to go to them on their terms because not just of their nukes, but because of the bad situation with Iran.

35:58But also everybody knows from Pyongyang to Beijing that there is nothing they can do if there actually is a war between North Korea and South Korea. They know that. Even with all the American troops which are stationed there, push comes to shove with the interceptors and all that. We are going to take tens of thousands of casualties, millions, if the ICBMs and all that get involved. Well, and we should also talk about South Korea's response to this. Because North Korea's response, very interesting, of like, we don't care about your military exercise. We're going to do what we want to do. Sure, you could come, you know, maybe we'll have a meeting, but you're not getting what you want.

36:31South Korea also was like, that's fine. We actually support you having some sort of dialogue with North Korea. and we are going to move in the direction of decoupling from relying on you anyway. That was their response. So both of these countries are sort of like, okay, bro, whatever, dude. Do whatever you're going to do. We're going to look out for ourselves because we know how much you've been humiliated on the world stage. We know the limits of your power now. So we have to look out for our own interests at this point. And let me go into that because it really does matter because one of the things I've seen now, and actually let me play Trump bashing South Korea, a bunch of MAGA people.

37:07We're backing him up. But the internal dynamics and the story here matter a lot. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

37:52They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

38:30I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

39:03Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us.

39:44Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

40:14Let's listen to B4, for example. South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years. and during my first term they agreed to pay close to three billion dollars a year for protection because we don't you know they essentially weren't there and i asked them to do that at my request i said not right they weren't happy about it but they agreed i asked for 10 billion dollars and they were very unhappy but we agreed for a short term there would be three billion dollars the next year would go up and the next year would go up so they start paying for their protection when the election was rigged and i ended up uh watching for four years and then coming back i watched uh biden rescind that three billion dollars here for whatever reason when i called recently uh the president of south korea who i like i think he's very nice actually but i called him i said would you like to give us a little hand we don't need help with iran but if you'd like give us a hand with iran he said no thanks and i said wait a We have 39 ,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong-un, your next-door neighbor, and you're not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran?

41:29That's strange. Right. So this is – South Korea is a freeloader. Israel, though, that's a good ally. It's preposterous. But let's tell the story of South Korea because their most recent foreign policy decision – I've talked about this on the show about THAAD. When the United States deployed those THAAD batteries, both the missiles to help intercept North Korean missiles, but the radar especially. The Chinese government, because that THAAD radar, the range extends well over Beijing. They were like, this has nothing to do with North Korea. It has to do with us, which is probably right. But anyway, the Chinese economically sanctioned soft-wise the hell out of South Korea.

42:07They took a massive hit. Chinese tourists stopped coming. They start banning all these exports. I mean, it was a real problem for their economy. The South Korean government said, at the end of the day, we must gamble. The Americans are our blood brothers. We fought in the Korean War. We sent our troops to fight in Vietnam. You know, 5 ,200 South Koreans died in Vietnam. Now, I'm not saying they should have been there in the first place, but they felt a moral obligation. We are together, right? They spent 3.5 % of their GDP on defense, which is more than most people in NATO. They allow these tens of thousands of Americans.

42:39This was the decision point for them. They said, we will gamble. We must go with America at the end of the day because they will protect us against China and against North Korea. Thus, we will take the hit. And then how did Trump repay them? He hit them with tariffs in the first term. Second time, then, Biden becomes president. He extends this stupidity policy of denuclearization first with North Korea. North Korea's nukes continue to dramatically expand. They have dozens now, nuclear weapons. Similar decision point. Remember, the previous South Korean president, 2022, I forget, it's like, Yoon something, the guy who tried to do martial law.

43:15Well, he had this entire policy of we will only extend our hand to North Korea in exchange for total denuclearization. The Biden administration and the first Trump administration largely were supportive of that idea. So they took the hard line, which was very antithetical to how China wanted and Pyongyang. Then what happens? He's an martial law takeover of the nation. He gets removed. So the current South Korean prime minister, he's a liberal Democrat. And I mean that in their sense, like a liberal Democratic party. He has the opposite approach. And so if you are the leader of South Korea, now under the second Trump administration, let me tell you their story.

43:56You've seen what it seems to go all in on the American empire. You've also watched the THAAD missiles get removed. So even though you said that they would be there to defend you, they took it away from Iran. We hurt their economy when it came to Iran. And then this, I cannot emphasize how important this story was too. Remember when that Hyundai plant got raided by ICE? This was a national scandal over there. I am talking like front page news that their people were treated like this. Because remember, we told them, just go ahead and come in here under visa waiver, whatever, get this plant revving.

44:30They built all these factories here. They have tens of billions of dollars invested in our country. To be treated and shackled like that and deported on national television on top of everything I just laid out, now you arrive at this current situation where now we're saying no more military exercises. And the current president says, you know what? Enough. I can't deal with this shit anymore. I have to maybe choose a different way. this is a disaster. They are our 10th largest trading partner. Samsung phones, the television I'm looking at right now is made in South Korea or designed in South Korea.

45:04The amount of bilateral economic trade and their importance to our economy is immense. So when I tell that story, if you're South Korean, what would you do? Any rational country would say, I'm done with these people. I can't deal with this shit anymore. That's the problem that we're living with. And South Korea is a microcosm of there are many countries around the world that maybe in less extreme ways are learning the very same lessons and saying, you know, we can't rely on these people. I mean, think about the Gulf Arabawais, for example. You know, even the ones that are still rah-rah, let's do the war with Iran, like UAE.

45:36Are they going to invite us back to our bases in the region? Did that work out well for them? No, they're thinking about this all very, very differently. And so there's a tremendous shift happening in the world. The very fact that South Korea was apparently asked to be involved in the Iran war, we're like, so you're on your own on this one. That is a significant sign as well. And Trump took it that way and was pissed about it. But you can understand 100 % where they're coming from. And not to mention, he says this thing of, oh, it'd be an easy, just an easy little war with Iran that we ask them to be involved in.

46:05How dare they deny us their assistance in our easy little quick war with Iran here? Of course, we've seen how that's turned out. So no, it's a new day in the world. And this is one example of the way that countries are completely reassessing how they think about - And I forgot to mention this, this whole Navy thing. Guess which ally is the single most important node for American shipbuilding? Because we don't have to do anything anymore. Oh, it's called South Korea. Oh, which country has one of the best domestic munitions industry with its own interceptors and all that? It's called South Korea.

46:34It's like I could go on forever how important these people are compared to some Latvia or Estonia, some other nonsense country, which everybody in Washington gets all upset about when Trump is like, oh, maybe we shouldn't defend them. every it's like america the media everybody we blink an eye and we just forget the entire area of asia and how vitally important these people are but this story i just told that is now happening in japan they have a conservative pm they have their own national politics they just got screwed by trump and now same thing with shinzo the current conservative japanese establishment went all in on Trump.

47:12Same thing. They got slapped around in these tariff negotiations. They're extremely pissed. The prevailing sentiment, as I understand it, inside the Japanese government is if we could go back in time, we would never build anything in America. We would rather just pay the tariff. We hate your country. We hate dealing with all of you people. And we'd rather just sell to China or whatever. And now we're militarily screwing them. And these are the number three economy in the world, the top, you know, top trading partner outside of Canada, Mexico, and China. I mean, think about how important these countries are just to our own everyday existence.

47:47And so how much we've screwed them, like the bill will come due as we say, like nothing happens overnight, but empires die very slowly and then all at once. We'll have one major event and then that's it. It's gone. And ultimately, you know, this may force actually a better, it's possible it forces is a better status quo, more realistic one, one that does allow us to trim our sails and cut the spending in terms of the military and be able to focus on our own people and not have these insane fantasies of world domination. But it's hard to imagine us getting there without. The way that Trump has done it, it's hard to imagine us getting there without a lot of pain in the process.

48:22Well, the flip side, and this is the danger. Guess what? South Korea, they're going to have a nuclear weapon in a decade. They'd be idiots not to. Japan, already, I read Japan Times yesterday, maybe we should rethink our constitution and nuclear weapons, right? And so, look, that's how it starts. So 10, 15 years from now, you got no more. What do you do? You get a nuke or you ally yourself with the Japanese and the Australians are doing joint exercises right now. That doesn't really happen normally without at least the United States. What I mean is it doesn't normally happen separately outside of America.

48:54But this is what rebalance all starts to look like. And it's not to our benefit whatsoever. Now we're going to welcome on a guest of the show, Sal from the What's Going On With Shipping channel. I'm sure he'll have plenty more to say about this. So let's bring him in here. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

49:32Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, We're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

50:11Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that, uh... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.

50:44Guaranteed human.