The Legacy of the 'Axis of Evil'

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

77% : "Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency's hand at that beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day," wrote Kim Jong-un in his first letter to Trump dated December 25, 2018, following the Singapore summit in June that year.
56% : There was a fundamental review of the longstanding American global leadership footprint under Trump.
51% : Trump had taken the letters to his personal residence after the end of his presidential term.
48% : "In 2020, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Bob Woodward obtained 25 of the 27 letters communicated by Trump and the North Korean dictator.
46% : When pressed for sharing the letters he had sent to the North Korean leader, Trump had told Woodward, "Oh, those are so top secret."
45% : Very close," Trump said of his ties with the supreme leader, even though he may have been confused about where he met Kim.
43% : But with Donald Trump in the Oval Office in 2016, many foreign policy goals shifted, including whether commitment to democracy promotion and human rights should be considered a priority at all.
40% : More importantly, it empowered the hawks in Iran to intensify their anti-American hostility with rhetorical ammunition provided by the U.S. president.
38% : Instead, incongruous strategies in dealing with the three nations that Bush had described as the worst enemies of America exposed the degree to which that public policy declaration was inspired by his whims or vendettas.
36% : But everything unraveled when Donald Trump walked away from the accord in May 2018.
24% : "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world," Bush famously told the Congress and the American people 23 years ago.
15% : The effect that the Bush speech had on the prospects of Iran-U.S. relations was almost the same as the damage inflicted after Donald Trump ditched the nuclear deal in 2018.

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