A year ago, President Trump became the first U.S. chief executive to sit down with a leader of the totalitarian North Korean regime. The Singapore summit, festooned with U.S. and North Korean flags, gave Kim Jong Un a public relations triumph. The U.S. got, well, the return of imprisoned Otto Warmbier (who died one week after the summit), the promised return of the remains of U.S. Korean War dead (unfulfilled) and, well, the promise of more talks.
In a second summit earlier this year, Trump walked away in the face of getting nothing. But, even before the meeting, the administration dropped long-standing U.S. demands that Pyongyang fully disclose its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. While Kim hasn't done any long-range testing since last year, he's resumed short-range launches (which Trump called "minor"). (Meanwhile, a frustrated Kim, subsequently killed the head of his negotiating team, so there's that.)
And now, in one more acquiescence, after exchanging fawning letters to one another, Trump, drops by into the DMZ after the G-20 Summit, becoming the first incumbent president to enter North Korea. Another fantastic photo-op for Kim.
And, according to a reports, the U.S. will apparently give up on the idea of denuclearization in exchange for a nuclear freeze.
"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war," but shouldn't the U.S. have something tangible to show in exchange for delivering public relations coups sought by a tyrannical regime for generations?
