US-North Korea ‘fake’ summit - Bombast won’t make us safer
US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un cut short their second summit without reaching an agreement.
Trump has said he had walked away from a nuclear deal at his summit with Kim Jong Un because of unacceptable demands from the North Korean leader to lift American-led sanctions that are crippling its economy.
Ending two days of talks in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi without agreement will embarrass Trump who prides in his capacity as The Great Negotiator.
The failure of the summit, which never went beyond pageantry to deal with substantive issues, raises the question of how prepared the Trump administration was.
It also shows that, while empty rhetoric and bombast may get you into the White House, it will not be enough to make the world a safer place. That takes quiet deliberation, steadfast negotiation and statesmanship.
President Trump has none of the above and he showed that by taking time out during the summit to seek to discredit his former lawyer Michael Cohen after the ex-aide’s bombshell congressional testimony in which he essentially called Trump a criminal.
Trump is fond of berating what he calls ‘fake news’ in the media and, while supposedly concentrating on negotiations with North Korea, he attacked the ‘fake hearing’ by Congress.
That begs the question: was this a fake summit?
