PRESIDENT TRUMP AND SUPREME LEADER KIM JONG-UN

No surprise to me is that the meeting between President Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un has formally been called off by Trump.  It never seemed as if it would have a good ending.  I have to wonder if either Trump or Kim ever really considered to have such a meeting?

At any rate, I feel it is all for the best.  I thought that Trump's demand for  North Korea to undergo complete denuclearization was a negotiating starting point.  If not, there is no point for a meeting as Kim would be crazy to give up all their nuclear weapons.  Why not just commit suicide and get it over with?

I thought that a freeze of North Korea's nuclear program in place might be a possibility.  Oh well.  There was talk that first the U.S. had to get out of the Iran deal or Kim would demand such a "mild" agreement.*  I suspect that the real reason that Trump got out of the Iran deal was that his boss (Netanyahu) ordered him to do so, just like Netanyahu ordered Trump to move the U.S. embassy to Jeruselum.

At least we got the release of three American hostages out of it.  And I guess we could count the destruction of the nuclear test site as an advance as well although there were speculations that the site was already destroyed.

For my earlier comment about a meeting "Two Sociopaths To Meet," see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2018/04/two-sociopaths-to-meet.html

* There’s some truth in this, but it misses a more basic point. Mr. Trump campaigned against the Iran deal not in principle, but because he saw its terms as bad for the U.S. Even if you disagree, taking his criticism seriously shows why the high-stakes negotiations with North Korea all but required Mr. Trump to dump the Iran deal. If he had kept it in place notwithstanding his power to withdraw, Mr. Kim could seize on its provisions as the starting point for the coming negotiations. Why would Mr. Kim accept a worse deal for North Korea than what Iran had obtained? Leaving one bad deal still active would have established the precedent for another bad deal. ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/before-meeting-kim-trump-had-to-repudiate-the-iran-deal-1527029167)