Bigworld, With Trump's press conference, I mainly wanted to check out his mental/emotional state. I remember back in 1973, an unstable Nixon latched on to a foreign crisis at the height of Watergate. The US went to Defcon III after the Soviets supposedly threatened to intervene in the Yom Kippur War. Recorded White House conversations showed that Nixon was drunk that night.
In contrast, the Donald seemed fully in command of himself, or at least what is considered 'normal' for him.
Some buckling under pressure wouldn't be too surprising considering what Trump has been subjected to. In addition to Nixon, LBJ reportedly went off the rails toward the end of his Presidency and after leaving office. We know Carter had some type of emotional crisis prior to becoming President, which was later cloaked as his 'born again' experience. Prior to becoming President, Bush Jr reportedly had such an alcohol problem that his wife threatened to leave him. Then there's Bill Clinton's reported cocaine problem. His brother Roger, who went to prison for dealing cocaine, said that Bill had a 'nose like a vacuum cleaner'.
Trump apparently doesn't drink, but his father died of Alzheimer's, and his brother was an alcoholic who committed suicide.
In the press conference I was impressed by the Donald's calm/rational state of mind, so hopefully he'll find a way to avert disaster with North Korea, as JFK did during the Cuban missile crisis. But JFK wasn't dealing with a lunatic like Kim Jung-un. Khrushchev was volatile (his shoe-banging antics at the UN), but he wasn't a nut case.
JFK had to deal with the crazed war hawks who wanted a nuclear showdown with Russia, and today Trump has the crazed Neocon element and others who may be ready for war. Rickards may be right that war with N. Korea is inevitable.
One promising sign however is that both China and Russia went along with the additional sanctions at the UN. But on the other hand, this might just be a sign that they see war as inevitable, and don't want to be seen as on the wrong side of the coming conflict, or of emboldening Kim Jung by giving him support.
So looks like crazy times are upon us, and even crazier still to come.
