Foreign Policy

Mike Pence’s Border Bravado Isn’t Scaring Anyone

Written by SK Ashby

Mike Pence is a man who is afraid to eat food with a woman who isn't his wife, a wife he refers to as "mother," but he apparently believes his stink-eye gaze terrifies the North Koreans

The photos you've seen of Mike Pence glaring at the North Korean side of the border are no accident; they're part of his master plan to intimidate Kim Jong Un.

Pence wasn’t supposed to walk outside, according to the schedule, but he decided in the moment he wanted to send a message directly to the North Koreans.

“I thought it was important that we went outside,” he said. “I thought it was important that people on the other side of the DMZ see our resolve in my face.”

I doubt the North Koreans would find Pence's face to be especially menacing even if Trump's "armada" had not sailed in the wrong direction into the wrong fucking ocean. Bold move, that was, sending the USS Carl Vinson into the Indian Ocean approximately 3,000 miles away.

North and South Korean soldiers stare at each other, sometimes face to face, literally every day. Both sides often station their most physically-imposing soldiers at the Joint Security Area where their mission is to look tough 24 hours a day.

Mike Pence isn't special.