The White House is pulling out all the stops for its historic summit with North Korea, and “by all the stops,” I mean “an inexplicable ’90s style movie trailer about denuclearization.” Because the line between politics and reality television is pretty much nonexistent at this point, the Trump administration created a promotional video about the stakes of the meeting, and it’s part propaganda film, part outdated, Hollywood-style trailer.
The video, which was aired in Korean and English for reporters ahead of Trump’s press conference in Singapore, is mostly composed of stock footage of world monuments and small children intercut with news clips of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. All the while, a narrator recites the kind of voice-over that would make even the laziest screenwriter cringe, including such phrases as “history is always evolving” and “the light of hope can burn bright.”
It seems Kim Jong-un is the protagonist of this imaginary movie, as the narrator asks: “What if a people that share a common and rich heritage can find a common future? Their story is well known but what will be their sequel?” Trump told the press that Kim “loved” the video, which he played for him on an iPad. Diplomacy!
The trailer’s so-called production company, Destiny Pictures, appears to be nothing more than a fanciful name invented for verisimilitude; though there is also a real production company with that same name, it had “no involvement” in the video, according to a representative.
