This was picked up by conobs yesterday, but Kevin Drum had more at Mother Jones:
Trump is demanding that South Korea pay roughly 500% more in 2020 to cover the cost of keeping US troops on the peninsula, a congressional aide and an administration official confirmed to CNN.
The price hike has frustrated Pentagon officials … deeply concerned Republican and Democratic lawmakers … and unnerved Seoul.
….In the US, congressional aides and Korea experts familiar with the talks say the President’s $4.7 billion demand came out of thin air,sending State and Defense Department officials scrambling to justify the number.
Repeat: “the President’s $4.7 billion demand came out of thin air”
It’s not a mystery when you make the mental adjustment to see it from the perspective of a man whose approach to running the country is that of a mob boss. Trump sees our international defense alliances as a protection racket, nothing more. He doesn’t see allies — he sees free loaders playing us for suckers, marks he can rough up for cash — Or Else.
Why South Korea? Perhaps this has something to do with it. From NPR yesterday:
...Satellite images obtained exclusively by NPR show dozens of aircraft lined up at the Wonsan International Airport on the nation's East Coast. The images were taken by the commercial company Planet on Nov. 11 and Nov. 13, and shared by analysts at 38 North, a website devoted to studying North Korea...
If commercial satellites are picking this up, U.S. intelligence sources undoubtedly have even more detailed images — although let us hope they were smart enough to just tell Trump about them and not let him see them.
Indications are North Korea is not happy with the way things are going (need a distraction from this perhaps?), and may be preparing some kind of demonstration of why the rest of the world should pay attention to them.
In a statement Wednesday at the North's permanent mission to the United Nations, a spokesperson again condemned joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea and warned that time is running out. "The U.S. has to ponder over what it can do during the short last hour left," it said.
Lewis says that assuming nothing changes between now and the end of the year, he expects Kim will move ahead with further provocations.
"I think we're going to see some new fireworks," he warns.
A normal president would regard this as a threat to an ally and a challenge to U.S. foreign policy that would call for reassurances of support for that ally and other measures.
As the impeachment hearings are making clear today, the basis of Trump’s foreign policy is “What’s in it for me?” Trump’s reaction to seeing North Korea showing its muscle is likely to see it as an opportunity to shake down South Korea. “Be a shame it anything happened to your country” as the saying goes.
At this point, it would not be a surprise to see that Kim Jong-Un and Trump are in on this together in a Bad Guy — Worse Guy team up. They “fell in love” after all. What better way for both of them to get what they want? North Korea gets attention, Trump gets to brag “No one has ever made a better deal” on our defense alliances. There is probably no actual collusion though. Trump is perfectly capable of seeing this as an opportunity to grab some cash all by himself.
Kevin Drum points out this is NOT chump change for South Korea:
...for the record, $4.7 billion in the South Korean national budget is about the equivalent of $50 billion in the US federal budget. It’s a lot of money he’s asking for.
When you see Trump telling the President of Ukraine:
...I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time…
...but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine…
...I would like you to do us a favor though...
it’s awfully hard not to catch that Godfather vibe coming through. Republican’s wouldn’t be so outraged over Schiff paraphrasing it if it wasn’t spot on. (Terribly uncivil of him, right?) It starts about 4 minutes in:
And of course, Trump made threats about what would happen to Former U.S. Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch:
...feeling threatened upon learning President Donald Trump had denounced her in a phone call to Ukraine’s president. In that call, Trump assailed her as “bad news” and said she was “going to go through some things.”
...In an extraordinary moment, even in an administration filled with them, Trump himself went after her again as she spoke, tweeting from the White House that everywhere she served had “turned bad.”
Asked at the hearing about the potential effect of such censure on U.S. officials and witnesses, she said, “Well, it's very intimidating.”
Trump should consider himself lucky he’s only facing impeachment. If Democrats were playing by his rules, he’d be sleeping with the fishes by now — or drinking polonium-laced tea. Just ask his BFF Vlad about that. We should consider ourselves lucky that Trump is less Don Corleone, and more Fredo. But before we get too smug about this, remember he still sits in the White House, the mob that put him there is fully behind him, and they have more like him waiting their turn.