This is about more than hypocrisy, though. It’s the way Trump views life and the world. The most unlikely president in American history can do no wrong, and nothing is more paramount than dominating and belittling his opponents. Trump looks out upon all the people of the world, the “haters and losers” chief among them, the people who say he can’t succeed, that he will fail in doing things his own way, and says, with a sort of swollen bravado, “I’m Trump, bitch.”

But in the end, Trump’s deal with Kim will very likely be a weaker, vaguer, and less-binding version of the Obama-era Iran deal that Trump tore up in May after mercilessly berating it as “too weak.” Indeed, Obama’s Iran deal forced the mullahs to give up 98 percent of their uranium. North Korea hasn’t even made full disclosure of its arsenal, and yet Trump has declared that it is no longer a nuclear threat. Trump has slammed Obama for giving billions of dollars is cash to Iran, except that it was Iran’s own money. Trump, in contrast, has already unilaterally declared that America will no longer conduct war games with South Korea because that is too provocative for North Korea. The difference between America’s concessions to Iran versus North Korea is, of course, that in the latter case it’s Trump making them.