Does the president need to tamp down expectations for his upcoming summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un? On Thursday President Trump announced that he will meet with Kim on June 12, in Singapore, promising it will “be a big success.” Here’s what he said of the upcoming meeting earlier that morning, upon greeting the three American hostages released from North Korea: “We’re starting off on a new footing. This is a wonderful thing that he released the folks early. That was a big thing. Very important to me. And I really think we have a very good chance of doing something very meaningful.”
While Trump has cautioned that if he’s getting a bad deal with Kim he’s willing to walk away, both his rhetoric around this meeting and his past behavior in encounters with everyone from foreign leaders to Democratic members of Congress suggests there’s a danger he may fall prey to empty promises from the North Korean autocrat. That’s not just the worry of North Korea experts around Washington—Republican members of Congress are gently warning the president to trust, but verify.
“The key though is, again, the president is going to have to go into this summit with his eyes wide open knowing that the North Koreans have a history of manipulating hopeful American politicians in the past and always turning around and continuing their nuclear missile programs,” said Mac Thornberry, the chairman of the House Armed Services committee, on Fox News Thursday. “I know the president knows that, but all of us are going to have to remember to keep our expectations in check because these people have a history of lying, cheating, and abusing a variety of folks.”
Last week, House speaker Paul Ryan also issued a vague warning against setting rosy expectations for the Trump-Kim summit. “I think it’s a good development, but actions are what matter here. The words are good. The visuals are good. But it’s the actions that truly matter. We have reason to believe he really, truly is willing to denuclearize, but we better verify this. We’ve had Lucy with the football before with this regime, with his dad, not with him. And so we have to be very cautious in that area,” Ryan said.
One More Thing—Certain aspects of the summit, such as how long it will last and whether Trump and Kim will meet one-on-one, are still being planned out, White House officials said Thursday. Deputy press secretary Raj Shah told reporters that achieving an agreement for Korean denuclearization at the meeting is “certainly a goal.”
“Our policy is to ensure the complete, irreversible, and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Shah said. “And that’s what he’s going to be seeking.”
The meeting will cap off a year of remarkable diplomatic swings between America and the Kim regime. In the months following the death last June of Otto Warmbier, a U.S. college student who was imprisoned for 18 months in North Korea for attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel, President Trump began to threaten and belittle the dictator, dubbing him “Little Rocket Man” and pledging to unleash “fire and fury” if Kim continued to provoke America. North Korea fired back, with state media calling Trump “mentally deranged” and a “dotard.”
So far in 2018, however, Kim has changed his tactics, trading in his aggressive posturing for rhetoric championing East Asian peace and and pursuing diplomacy with both South Korea and China. North Korea has also softened its own stance toward the United States, most notably by halting their nuclear and ballistic missile testing and by releasing those three Americans this week.
Must-Read of the Day—Ben Shapiro, writing in the brand-new issue of the magazine, on “How Conservatives Can Win Back Young Americans.” Among Shapiro’s insights is the generational divide among conservatives on the question of Donald Trump—and why young conservatives (not just young people in general) are so repelled by the president.
President Trump traveled to Elkhart, Indiana, Thursday evening to stump for Mike Braun, the newly-nominated GOP Senate candidate there. Republicans hope to topple vulnerable Democrat Joe Donnelly this November.
“Indiana will face an important choice,” Trump told the crowd. “You can send a really incredible swamp person back to the Senate like Joe Donnelly, or you can send us Republicans like Mike Braun to drain the swamp.”
True to form, Trump gave Donnelly a schoolyard moniker (“Sleepin’ Joe Donnelly”), assured the crowd that their right to bear arms was in danger (“Never believe that your Second Amendment is not under siege”), and slammed the news media early and often. “You remember everybody in the fake news, when they were saying he’s going to get us into a nuclear war?” Trump said. “You know what gets you into nuclear wars, and you know what gets you into other wars? Weakness.”
Photo of the Day
You Can’t Make It Up—From the Hill’s Jonathan Easley and Jordan Fabian:
Sadler was the subject of a recent magazine article of mine. A communications staffer who has took a more strident tone in emails with surrogates, she was the source of what looked to be a feedback loop between conservative media and the president on the issue of illegal immigration.
Cabinet Shakeup Watch—Via the New York Times: “Kirstjen Nielsen, Chief of Homeland Security, Almost Resigned After Trump Tirade”
Song of the Day— “Take Me To the Pilot” by Elton John
