POLITICUSUSA
Donald Trump this morning went to Twitter to declare that we are now safe from nuclear war thanks to him, and the biggest enemy we have in this country is the news media that does not cover him fairly.
Trump managed to give up everything while getting no firm commitment to denuclearization and no verification process as he got played by North Korea.
Trump told reporters that he doesn't need to prepare for the summit with North Korea because it is about "attitude."
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said on Sunday that Americans should expect a “bumpy road” ahead in negotiations with North Korea over denuclearization. His comments were clearly intended to inject a dose of reality into the media spectacle created by his boss President Donald Trump around the on-again, off-again summit with Kim Jong Un of North Korea.
Maybe we should call it McDonald’s Diplomacy. The latest analysis by the CIA of North Korea’s overtures to the United States said Kim Jong Un will not ever get rid of his nuclear weapons but instead will offer to open a hamburger franchise in North Korea as a sign of goodwill.
Kim Yong Chol, a four-star general in the North Korean army, landed in Beijing’s airport on Tuesday on his way to the United States to attend meetings with the Trump administration to discuss salvaging the scheduled June 12 summit in Singapore.
North and South Korea’s leaders held a hastily arranged secret meeting on Saturday in their attempts to salvage the June 12 summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.
Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in talked for two hours and afterwards they were hopeful they had a plan to convince America’s president that the summit should still take place in order to bring peace to the Korean peninsula. They also said that they plan additional talks this week to work out more details.
Trump bragged that he didn't have to pay ransom to get US hostages that should have never been taken back from N. Korea, but the policy of the US government is to never pay ransom for hostages.
Trump showed no regard for the safety of journalists by canceling the summit, while they are still in N. Korea to "witness" the "destruction" of a nuclear test site.
Trump is lowering expectations and walking back his planned North Korea summit by saying that the meeting may not happen on June 12.
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Trump said, “We’re moving along. We’ll see what happens. There are certain conditions we want. If we get those conditions, we don’t have the meeting. Frankly, it’s a chance to be a great, great meeting for North Korea and a great meeting for the world. If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later. Maybe it will happen at a different time. But we will see. But we are talking. The meetings scheduled as you know on June 12th in Singapore. Whether or not it happens, you’ll be knowing pretty soon, but we’re talking right now.”
President Donald Trump spoke on the telephone Saturday to South Korean President Moon Jae-in to discuss his worry that North Korea is not serious about reaching an agreement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Recent statements from North Korea have thrown uncertainty into the planning for the upcoming summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June.
The head negotiator for North Korea was back to his belligerent self on Thursday, and called the government of South Korea “ignorant and incompetent.”
North Korea is still upset that South Korea is holding joint air force exercises with the United States. When they say they want to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula what they mean is they want the United States to leave and stop working together with the South Korean military.
North Korea’s underground nuclear test site has been rendered unusable after most of the mountain on top of it collapsed, according to a group of Chinese scientists. The collapse means there won’t be any more missile testing going on there, and it may also mean there could be radioactive leaks threatening the environment and the health and safety of the population.
When Donald Trump announced on March 8th that he intended to meet with North Korea’s president Kim Jong Un, The Washington Post wrote that Korea had “snookered the credulous American president into a high-profile summit that is likely to end in disaster one way or another.”
Only in a military dictatorship will you find a leader crazy enough to spend money on building monuments to his favorite inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). But that is exactly what is going on in North Korea. Dictator Kim Jong Un has decided that the country needs to spend money on these monuments (even though his people are starving) because the recent tests of ICBMs have shown the world how great and powerful he is.
While President Trump and Vice President Pence proceed to use severe rhetoric when discussing relations with North Korea, the governments of the two Koreas are continuing to take diplomatic steps to ease tensions that have existed between them for decades.
"The only war that's worse than one that's intended is one that's unintended. This is not the stuff to be tweeting about."
Trump dropped the commission, but he plans to direct the Department of Homeland Security "to review these issues."
Trump's temperament has been a concern since before he was even elected a year ago, but those worries have only increased since he took office.
The United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's public assertion that such talks are a waste of time.