The mainstream media’s attempts to portray President Donald Trump’s dealings with Kim Jung Un as “cozying up to a tyrant” are pathetically transparent and hypocritical.

The president’s use of the good cop/bad cop technique and classic salesmanship to bring the North Koreans to the table and get a tentative agreement is brilliant. The media and Democrats’ apoplectic response illustrates their envy and frustration about Donald Trump’s successes and the contrast with previous administration’s failures.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the process, but a process that until recently, according to the media’s narrative, ended with the president leading us into nuclear war.

As for cozying up to dictators, remember Obama’s apology tour, his normalizing relations with the Castro dictatorship and giving the store away to Iran while ignoring the pleas of Iranian protesters.

History is replete with examples of dealing with tyrants, such as the alliance with the Soviet Union during World War II and Nixon’s opening of relations with China. Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong were the worst mass murders in human history; for better or worse, accommodation was made on the calculation of the present good.

President Trump has managed to gain China’s cooperation dealing with North Korea and proposed admitting Russia back into the G-7, while maintaining sanctions against Russia and North Korea and playing hardball with China on trade. Meanwhile, the president’s policies have spurred economic growth, effectively destroyed ISIS and restored American influence in the world.

I would like to add one more historical footnote, a cautionary tale for the press and historians: the New York Times received a Pulitzer prize for Walter Duranty’s reporting on the Soviet Union during the 1930s, a total whitewash of tyranny and mass murderers.

Mainstream media, put your biases aside — you report, we’ll decide.

Eugene Comiskey,

Tryon