In a startling spell of televised negotiating, Trump tried to keep alive his planned summit with Kim next month, offering “very strong” protections to Kim if he seals a deal. In another apparent concession, Trump also publicly broke with John Bolton, two days after North Korea expressed “repugnance” for his national security adviser’s hardline position.
The President’s prolonged discourse on North Korea in an Oval Office photo-op Thursday indicated just how much he has invested in the summit — which Pyongyang threatened to blow up on Wednesday over US-South Korean military exercises and American demands for an irreversible decommissioning of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
His apparent movement toward Pyongyang’s position came after two days of unusual restraint from the President, as his top officials tried to decipher Kim’s latest move and ultimately concluded the North Korean leader was grandstanding but that the summit would go on.
At one point, it seemed Trump was reaching out directly to Kim himself over the airwaves, seeking to reassure him about his central concern — his grip on power — and offering reasons for him not to cancel their historic meeting, set for June 12 in Singapore.
Pyongyang is angry that Bolton has been advocating the same approach to North Korea that was used during the George W. Bush administration with Libya, which boxed up and sent its rudimentary nuclear weapons program outside the country without getting concessions.
But Trump implied that he was not considering such an approach — which in any event would be far more complicated given the advanced state of Kim’s nuclear arsenal.
“The Libyan model isn’t a model that we have at all when we’re thinking of North Korea … the Libyan model that was mentioned was a much different deal,” Trump said. “The Libyan model was a much different model. We decimated that country.”
The President appeared to be referring mostly to the 2011 NATO-led air operation in Libya in support of anti-government rebels, which eventually led to the overthrow and assassination of longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
“This with Kim Jong Un would be something where he’d be there. He’d be…
