CEO of ADL: Seeing a 'blitzkrieg of anti-Jewish' acts across US Dana Bash: This is so telling about where the Republican party is NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 24: Trump Tower stands on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on August 24, 2018 in New York City. Following new allegations over hush money that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid to an adult-film actress, the Manhattan district attorneyÕs office in New York City may seek criminal charges against the Trump Organization in the coming days. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Why GOP is standing in the way of Capitol riot investigation WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 08: US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) remarks on the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the US Capitol November 8, 2006 in Washington, DC. Warner said he supports President George W. Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. Warner said he anticipates Gates' confirmation before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (L) and Senate Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks following a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the Russell Senate Office Building on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. Hear what Matt Gaetz said about Paul Ryan before his speech Former GOP senator: If McConnell said this, 'it's shameful' 'Some people have no shame': Biden calls out GOP lawmakers with list U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pose before their meeting during the second U.S.-North Korea summit at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam February 27, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s Hanoi summit with Kim Jong Un, meant to demonstrate his diplomatic gamble with North Korea is working, instead ended with no joint agreement after Kim insisted all US sanctions be lifted on his country. That was a bridge too far for the US President, who said Kim offered to take some steps toward dismantling his nuclear arsenal but not enough to warrant ending the debilitating sanctions regime on the country. “Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump said during a news conference following the conclusion of the summit, which broke up earlier than planned. “This was just one of those times.” But it was evident from early in the summit that Trump was seeking to tamp down expectations, repeating he’s in no rush to strike a deal even as North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons program. “I’ve been saying very much from the beginning that speed is not that important to me,” Trump said earlier Thursday at the summit’s outset. “Speed is not important to me. What is important is that we do the right deal.” Trump cast the lack of deal as only a short-term disappointment, even though he’d hoped coming into the talks to be able to point to a new, concrete pathway toward denuclearization. A major agreement struck in Hanoi may also have pushed aside embarrassing headlines about Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen testifying the President is a racist conman. The President, who said scheduling Cohen’s testimony during his summit was a “terrible thing,” instead suggested the inconclusive talks with Kim were another step in a lengthy process toward convincing the young leader to abandon his nuclear program. The personal chemistry that Trump has cultivated – and loudly trumpeted – with the young despotic leader remains intact, the President insisted. And the summit ended amicably, without either man storming away. “It was a very friendly walk,” Trump said. ’Closer’ Evan Vucci/AP Still, the absence of a joint agreement reflects an anticlimax for a summit event Trump had hoped would prove naysayers of his diplomacy wrong. He conceded that US and North Korean officials remain at odds about the precise definition of denuclearization, which is the ostensible goal of his efforts. “He has a certain vision and it’s not exactly our vision, but it’s a lot closer than it was a year ago and I think eventually we’ll get there,” Trump said. And he described Kim as singularly focused on ending the sanctions that have crippled his economy and helped bring him to the negotiating table in the first place. Trump said Kim had offered to begin dismantling the Yongbyon nuclear facility, a step that would have amounted to a major concession. But it wasn’t enough, Trump said, alluding to additional sites that comprise what is a deeply secretive nuclear program. “We asked him to do more and he was unprepared to do that,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who joined Trump on stage for the duration of the news conference. “Everyone had hoped we could do just a little bit better.” US and North Korean negotiators had been in Hanoi for days drafting language of a joint agreement ahead of the talks, and the ceremony was listed on a version of the President’s public schedule released Wednesday evening. Stephen Biegun, the President’s North Korea envoy, arrived several days before Trump to seal the document. During an expanded session with aides, Trump and Kim discussed the prospect of opening a US office in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. Kim said he would welcome the idea, and Trump deemed it a “good idea.” Yet afterward, it appeared the chances for that – along with any other concessions or agreements – were dashed, even as the White House insisted the talks were productive. The two leaders departed the Metropole, the French-colonial hotel where the talks unfolded, around 1:30 p.m. local time, roughly four-and-a-half hours after the talks began. They also left without participating in a working lunch, even as chefs had been preparing plates of foie gras and snow fish. Lowered expectations Leah Millis/REUTERS If the day ended without a triumphant finish, there were extraordinary moments peppered throughout the day. In unprecedented back-and-forth exchanges with journalists, Kim insisted he was open to denuclearization, though didn’t say what he believed that meant. It’s believed to be the first time Kim has answered a question from a foreign journalist, a landmark event for the iron-fisted dictator. “If I’m not willing to do that I won’t be here right now,” he said through an interpreter. Kim, for his part, also expressed cautious optimism earlier in the day that a deal would eventually be struck. But he did not suggest such an accord would come soon. “It’s too early to say,” he said in response to a foreign journalist’s shouted question. “From what I feel right now, I do have a feeling that good results will come out.” He again responded to journalists later in the day, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. The two leaders went back-and-forth over the prospect of exchanging liaison officers – a low level diplomatic partnership – after the issue was raised by a journalist. Initially, Kim seemed to reject the question, proposing to Trump that the media be excused from the room. But Trump seemed to goad him to answer, saying it was a good question. “I would like to hear that answer,” Trump said. Kim responded through his interpreter, saying it would be something that was “welcome-able.” Trump expressed a similar sentiment: “I actually think it’s a good idea.” Kim added it would be better for Trump and him to discuss it together in private. Trump’s dual objectives 05:06 - Source: CNN Cuomo and Lemon break down Cohen's testimony Trump was pursuing two objectives as he sat down once again with the North Korean dictator on Thursday: draw North Korea closer to the prospect of abandoning its nuclear weapons and regain control of the media narrative. As he arrived at the swanky Metropole Hotel on Wednesday to advance his historic direct diplomacy with Kim, Trump was quickly upstaged by the damning congressional testimony of his longtime former attorney and adviser Michael Cohen. By the time Trump finished dinner with Kim, the airwaves were blanketed with coverage of Cohen’s testimony. A grand agreement on denuclearization might have helped in that effort to change the narrative. But on Thursday Trump repeatedly downplayed the prospects of a deal emerging from the Hanoi talks and suggested something more vague might result from his second summit with Kim.<doc-sep>Trump’s panegyrics to Kim raised expectations that the Hanoi summit would end in some kind of deal. Administration officials signaled that the United States would be willing to grant a peace declaration ending the Korean War, exchange liaison offices with North Korea and relax sanctions to allow South Korea to build closer economic ties with Pyongyang. In return, Kim was expected to shutter at least part of Yongbyon, the country’s main, but hardly sole, nuclear weapons facility. Many experts feared that Trump, desperate to distract attention from his political troubles, might go even further by agreeing to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea. When NBC News reported on Wednesday afternoon that the administration was dropping its demands that North Korea provide a full accounting of its weapons of mass destruction, critics’ worst fears appeared to be coming true.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump embarked on his trip to Vietnam with a political cloud hanging over his head and keen to show progress on a thorny foreign policy issue that has befuddled many of his predecessors. U.S. President Donald Trump exits Air Force One arriving from his summit meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Vietnam after landing for a refueling stop at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis Now, he is just back from a Hanoi summit with North Korea that collapsed and the cloud has grown darker. While Trump’s much-hyped meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un broke up in disagreement over sanctions linked to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, testimony from his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who accused him of breaking the law while in office, represented a potentially damaging development for the president at home. Trump faced challenges on other fronts: sensitive talks with China over a trade deal, a slow-rolling crisis in Venezuela, tensions between India and Pakistan and an attempt in Congress to kill his emergency declaration aimed at securing funding for a wall on the border with Mexico. U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller may also end his probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election in a matter of days - ensuring that speculation about the role of Trump and his campaign will keep making headlines. Before Trump left for Vietnam, he privately complained that Democrats would go ahead with the Cohen testimony, violating an unwritten rule against attacking the president while he is overseas. He also wished the Mueller report was finished. Back at the White House on Friday, the Republican president unleashed a series of tweets slamming Cohen and accusing him of lying. “He was very unhappy that they were holding the hearings while he was overseas,” said one person who was present and asked to remain unnamed. “He was also very unhappy that the Mueller investigation had not been concluded before he left. He felt that there was a cloud hanging over him.” While at the summit, Trump cut the talks about North Korea’s denuclearization short and the two sides gave conflicting accounts of what happened, raising doubts about the future of one of Trump’s signature initiatives. The White House had included a signing ceremony for a deal on Trump’s public schedule in Hanoi - and then abruptly canceled it. Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complained about reporters being obsessed with what he tried to dismiss as “process” and said they were “radically uninformed.” “Y’all shouldn’t get hung up on things like that,” Pompeo told reporters traveling with him. As the summit unfolded, Trump kept up to date with Cohen’s testimony from his suite at a Hanoi hotel despite the 12-hour time difference. The conclusion among Trump’s inner circle was that the president came out of the week okay, feeling there was not much new in Cohen’s testimony and that Trump was getting credit for walking away from a potentially bad deal with the North Koreans. “There were no surprises this week,” said Christopher Ruddy, a conservative media mogul and a close friend of the president. “We knew North Korea was a tough nut to crack and that Michael Cohen was going to say a lot of nasty stuff. At the end of the day I don’t think it changes the political climate for President Trump,” Ruddy told Reuters. But the Cohen testimony raised questions among Trump allies about the ability of Republicans and the president’s re-election campaign to organize a proper response. “Where’s the defense of the president?” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Trump friend, told ABC’s “This Week” program on Wednesday. In Congress, efforts to block Trump’s national emergency declaration intensified with the introduction of legislation in the Republican-led Senate, although it faces an uphill path to passage. Trump will have a friendly audience on Saturday when he addresses the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference in a Maryland suburb of Washington. At CPAC on Thursday, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel was quick to defend Trump’s handling of the Vietnam summit. “He walked away rightly because he said we’re not going to take away the sanctions if you not going to de-nuclearize,” she said to applause.<doc-sep>
Sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make. Certainly, President Trump Donald TrumpTrump lashes out after grand jury seated for New York criminal probe Schumer tees up vote on Jan. 6 commission bill Senators struggle to save Jan. 6 commission MORE’s decision to walk out of the Hanoi summit and return to Washington to prepare his next tweetstorm is a better outcome than accepting a bad deal. But for the president to travel halfway around the world for a failed summit is worth some introspection and reflection. North Korea’s apparent demand for full sanctions relief in return for decommissioning the Yongbyon nuclear facility probably was known well in advance. For an administration that has prided itself on not offering any sanctions relief until full denuclearization, the United States should have seen the train wreck well in advance and put on the brakes. President Trump and Secretary Mike Pompeo Mike PompeoThe Memo: Media face hard questions on Trump, Wuhan lab Trump on Wuhan lab: Now everyone agrees 'I was right' With denuclearization stalled, Biden should focus on human rights reform in North Korea MORE have made the claim that they will not repeat the alleged mistakes of their predecessors. More accurately, none of their predecessors ever made the mistakes the Trump administration has made. ADVERTISEMENT The president likes to think outside the box, but he should bear in mind that sometimes the box is there for a reason. Diplomacy did not begin with Donald Trump (though let’s hope it doesn’t end with him either). Typically, a decision to send the president on a roundtrip 20,000-mile journey would depend on whether a deal is at hand, not a long shot. It is true that in international negotiations, often a country’s negotiators resist making the concessions needed to conclude a deal and kick those up to the summit level. But this pattern usually is accompanied by signals, subtly but clearly conveyed, that a summit-level meeting will be successful. Maybe the North Korean and U.S. negotiators gave each other these signals and, in so doing, got out ahead of their bosses, but that is rare — especially for North Korean negotiators, for whom such errors of judgment can be life-threatening. One hopes that if Trump and Pompeo have any moment of reflection in the wake of the failed summit, they might use it to consider how a broader diplomatic architecture might improve the chances for success. Working with Xi Jinping’s China is may be difficult, but working against China is arguably far more so. The advantage of a more multilateral approach is to reinforce the circumstances that the North Koreans cannot go shopping in Beijing, or elsewhere, for a better deal. Improved patterns of cooperation between the United States and China (and South Korea, Russia and Japan) can help keep the North Koreans focused on the deal on the table and not on leveraging it with side trips to, say, China, as Kim Jong Un has done four times in the past year (a somewhat unintended consequence of the Singapore-Hanoi process). Sustained cooperation among regional partners also makes a return to a sanctions-based policy more credible than it is today. Addressing the North Korean nuclear problem is as complex an issue as any in the world today because it is not just about North Korea. The only time in history the United States has ever clashed with China was on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea is China’s neighbor and a historical partner whose demise or even strategic shift toward South Korea and the United States is hardly a matter of disinterest in Beijing. ADVERTISEMENT When China looks at the fragility of its Marxist-Leninist neighbor, it sees the potential for a U.S. ally on its border, possibly with U.S. listening posts or even U.S. military posts along the Yalu. It sees a neighbor whose demise might affect China’s own domestic political churn. With the help of a map and a history book, it is easy to understand why China wants stability in North Korea, but given the freighted history of Northeast Asia, it is equally clear why China worries about outcomes. After all, many Chinese can indeed see North Korea from their window. South Korea’s attitudes toward North Korea are no less complex and deserving of serious and thoughtful U.S. strategy. Opinions in South Korea about North Korea are diverse.