In the president’s mind, Kim is backing out of a gentleman’s agreement to denuclearize—one sealed in by that holiest of macho deal-making rites, the handshake. Monday’s tweet is suggestive of a growing impression that Trump is starting to interpret Kim’s treatment of Pompeo as a sign of bad faith.
None of this is true, of course. North Korea has deceived the United States in the past, but not this time. Weeks before the summit, Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s first vice minister of Foreign Affairs, made it crystal clear that the Kim-Trump meeting could not proceed “if the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment.”…
But no matter how clear North Korea has tried to make its negotiating position, Trump has not grokked the reality that Kim Jong Un is not giving up his nukes—no matter how convincing those handshakes in Singapore might have felt.
