特朗普口中的金正恩：从“疯子”到“十分可敬”
华盛顿——不到一年前，特朗普还在猛烈抨击朝鲜领导人金正恩是一个“疯子”，屠杀本国人民的凶手，还因他进行核试验蔑称他为“小火箭人”，取笑他发胖的身材。
Early Thursday morning, a jubilant Mr. Trump described how Mr. Kim had been “excellent” to three American prisoners he had agreed to release from a prison in North Korea, and “nice” to free them so early — a “wonderful thing” that showed Mr. Kim’s desire to end his country’s isolation. The comments came two weeks after Mr. Trump praised Mr. Kim as “very honorable” in discussions about a coming summit meeting.
周四上午一早，特朗普就喜气洋洋地说，金正恩很“好”，因为他同意释放三名关押在朝鲜监狱的美国人，而且能这么早释放也是很“不错”的——这是一件“大好事”，表明金正恩有终结国家孤立状态的意愿。就在做出这些评论两周前，特朗普称赞金正恩在讨论即将到来的峰会时“十分可敬”。
The head-snapping rhetorical turn has accompanied a major shift in the dynamic between the United States and North Korea as Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim prepare for the unpredecented meeting next month in Singapore. It also underscores the president’s black-and-white worldview — a stark formulation in which there is good or evil, friend or enemy, and not much in between — that has opened him to criticism that he has been too quick to embrace a brutal leader as a worthy negotiating partner.
眼下特朗普和金正恩正在准备下月在新加坡的那场史无前例的会晤，在他的言辞猝然反转的同时，美朝关系的动静开合也正迎来重大转变。这也突显了总统非黑即白的世界观——一个非好即坏、非友即敌、没有多少中间位置的单调构想——过快地将一个残酷的领导人接纳为值得尊敬的谈判伙伴，也引来了人们的批评。
“We’re starting off on a new footing,” Mr. Trump said at Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland, where he had arranged for a showy middle-of-the-night arrival for the prisoners to be broadcast live on television. He added, “There’s never been a relationship like this.”
“我们有了一个新的起点，”特朗普在马里兰州的安德鲁斯联合基地(Joint Base Andrews)说，在这里，他安排了一场让电视现场直播囚犯半夜抵达的炫耀场面。“从没有像这样关系，”他补充道。
Critics pounced on the remarks as evidence that the president was in the process of being duped and outplayed by Mr. Kim.
批评人士立即将这个言论视为总统正在被金正恩欺骗和击败的证据。
“We can’t be fooled into giving the North Korean regime credit for returning Americans that never should have been detained in the first place,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “It is so troubling to hear President Trump say that Kim Jong-un treated the Americans excellently.”
“我们不能因为他们归还了几个人就被愚弄去赞扬朝鲜政权，这些美国人本来就不该被关押，”纽约州民主党领导人、参议员查克·舒默(Chuck Schumer)。“听到特朗普总统说金正恩对美国人很好，让人非常担忧。”
Over-the-top messaging, both positive and negative, is nothing new for Mr. Trump, whose 1987 book “The Art of the Deal” argued that “bravado” was crucial to salesmanship.
正面和负面兼有的、过于夸张的信息，这对特朗普来说并不新鲜。他1987年的书《交易的艺术》(The Art of the Deal)就称“虚张声势”是一个十分关键的推销技巧。
“People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular,” the book says. “I call it truthful hyperbole.”
“人们愿意相信某个东西是最大的、最棒的、最惊人的，”这本书写道。“我把这叫做‘真实的夸张’。”
As president, Mr. Trump has married that style with a distinctly personal approach to foreign policy, in which he appears to have utmost confidence in his ability to win over his counterparts around the world with flattery, shows of respect and plays to ego — all things that he relishes himself.
作为总统，特朗普将这一风格与他个人独特的外交政策手段结合了起来。看起来，他深信自己凭着阿谀奉承、表现尊敬、迎合自负的本事可以征服全世界——他自己也乐在其中。
White House officials said this week that Mr. Trump had made it clear that he was unwilling to offer any concessions or negotiate for the release of the prisoners, and expressed confidence that Mr. Kim would respect that position and do the right thing anyway.
白宫官员本周表示，特朗普已经明确表示，他不愿在释放在押人员的事情上做任何让步或谈判，并相信金正恩终归会尊重这一立场，做出正确选择。
“It’s not unusual in diplomacy for people to be yelling at each other in one moment and singing kumbaya in the next, but what makes this so dramatic is that the president went further in both directions than others have,” said Peter D. Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University who was a national security official under George W. Bush. “I think that’s a reflection of his belief that we have to break the standard playbook here — we’ve tried everything else with North Korea and it hasn’t worked, so why not try something different?”
“在外交上，人们上一秒互相大骂、下一秒高唱‘欢聚一堂’(kumbaya)的情况并不少见，但总统的惊人之处在于，他在两个方向上都比别人更进了一步，”杜克大学(Duke University)政治学教授、曾在乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)政府担任国家安全官员的彼得·D·菲弗(Peter D. Feaver)说。“我认为这说明他坚信我们该打破标准玩法——我们对朝鲜什么都试过了，都没用，那为什么不试些不同的东西呢?”
Few dispute that Mr. Trump has shattered the norms of diplomatic communication when it comes to his language about Mr. Kim — both positive and negative — and raised the stakes for the nuclear negotiations along the way.
特朗普对金正恩使用的正面和负面语言打破了外交沟通的常规，顺带也提高了核谈判的赌注，这一点很少有人会有异议。
“He has gone from extremely negative comments on Kim designed to frighten him into coming to the negotiating table to, now, extremely flattering comments designed to make him conclude a deal,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former C.I.A. analyst who is a senior fellow for Korea at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s just so over the top. No president has ever spoken in either way.”
“为了吓唬金正恩坐到谈判桌前而给出十分负面的评价，转变为了现在为使他达成协议而作出的极其谄媚的评价，”前中情局分析师、现为国际战略研究中心(Center for Strategic and International Studies)朝鲜问题高级研究员的苏密·特里(Sue Mi Terry)说。“这实在是太夸张了。这两种方式，都是任何一个总统都不曾使用的。”
The love-hate dynamic started during Mr. Trump’s candidacy in 2015, when he described Mr. Kim as “this maniac sitting there” with nuclear weapons who had to be dealt with. Once Mr. Trump became president, the insults continued. In 2016, Mr. Trump called the North Korean leader a “bad dude.” He became more heated in his denunciations over the summer after Mr. Kim tested a long-range missile that appeared capable of hitting the United States.
这样爱恨交织的动态从特朗普2015年还是候选人的时候就开始了，当时他形容金正恩是带着核武器“坐在那儿的疯子”，必须解决。特朗普成为总统后，这样的侮辱仍在继续。2016年，特朗普称这位朝鲜领导人是一个“坏家伙”。在那年夏天金正恩试验了似乎有能力抵达美国的远程导弹后，他的谴责变得更加激烈。
“Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?” the president wrote on Twitter. Weeks later, he vowed to rain down “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea continued to threaten the United States.
“这家伙的生命中就没别的事可做了吗?”这位总统在Twitter上写道。几周后，他誓言如果朝鲜继续威胁美国，他就要倾倒“世界前所未见的炮火与怒火”。
Mr. Trump brought his streetfighter-style words to the United Nations the next month with another threat to Mr. Kim. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime,” he said, a line that he embellished during a campaign rally in Alabama not long after, branding the North Korean leader “Little Rocket Man.”
接下来的一个月，特朗普把他街头打斗式的语言带到了联合国，再次威胁金正恩。“火箭人正在为自己和他的政权执行一项自杀式任务，”他说。不久，他又在一个竞选集会上再次修饰了这句话，将朝鲜领导人蔑称为“小火箭人”。
His advisers privately cringed at the talk, concerned that the president’s warnings and insults could escalate tensions with Mr. Kim, who is known to be thin-skinned, to the point of precipitating a nuclear crisis.
他的顾问们私下里对这一言论表示怀疑，担心总统的警告和侮辱可能会加剧与金正恩的紧张关系——金正恩以脸皮薄闻名——以至于加速核危机的恶化。
Now, the concern is in the other direction, that Mr. Trump is raising expectations for his ability to achieve a breakthrough with Mr. Kim that may not materialize, based purely on a personal rapport that he is overstating.
现在，人们的担忧转到了另一个方向，那就是，特朗普正在导致人们对他与金正恩取得突破的能力产生过高的期待，他所能依靠的只有他所夸大的融洽的个人关系。他可能无法实现突破。
“The problem is that this gives a sense that he’s so willing to conclude a grand bargain with Kim that he’ll do anything,” Ms. Terry said of Mr. Trump. “I don’t think he can help it.”
“问题是，这给人一种感觉，他非常迫切地想与金正恩达成一项重大协议，所以他愿意做任何事情，”特里这样评价特朗普。“我认为他无法控制自己。”
Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer, said that from a young age, Mr. Trump had become accustomed to using grandiose words to threaten or flatter, usually to sell something, oftentimes himself.
特朗普的传记作者迈克尔·德安东尼奥(Michael D’Antonio)表示，特朗普从小就习惯于用夸张的言辞进行威胁或奉承，通常是推销什么东西，往往是他自己。
“I actually think that these guys speak the same language,” Mr. D’Antonio said of Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim, adding that the summit meeting would bring together two leaders who are supremely focused on their own images, intolerant of slights and addicted to flattery.
“我真的认为，这两个人说的是同一种语言，”德安东尼奥在提到特朗普和金正恩时说。他还表示，这次峰会会把两个非常专注于自己的形象、无法容忍蔑视、痴迷于奉承的领导人聚到一起。
“So we're going to have a narcissist duet in Singapore, with these two guys, maybe the only two guys on Earth who know this song so well,” Mr. D’Antonio said. “And they’re going to sing it to each other.”
“所以，我们会在新加坡见证一场自恋二重唱，他们也许是地球上唯一非常熟悉这首歌的两个人，”德安东尼奥说。“他们会唱给彼此听。”
