National security adviser John Bolton, making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, flatly refused to offer his personal assessment of whether Trump’s summit with Kim — which ended early and without an agreement — had effectively handed the autocrat an unearned victory.

And Trump and his top trade adviser quibbled in front of reporters and Chinese officials late last month during an Oval Office meeting over how to describe the contracts that would form the basis of any trade deal between the United States and China…

Late last month, ahead of Trump’s meeting with Kim in Hanoi, Pompeo was asked in an interview with CNN whether he agreed with the president’s tweet following last year’s Singapore summit that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”

Pompeo initially denied Trump made the statement. Then, when read the tweet, he pivoted to saying the president said that the nuclear threat from Pyongyang has been “substantially taken down.”