Tag: Hanoi summit

How the Trump-Kim Summit Failed: Big Threats, Big Egos, Bad Bets

HANOI, Vietnam — As President Trump settled into the dining room of a French-colonial hotel in Hanoi on Thursday morning, the conversation with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader with whom he had struck up the oddest of friendships, was already turning tense.

In a dinner at the Metropole Hotel the evening before, mere feet from the bomb shelter where guests took cover during the Vietnam War, Mr. Kim had resisted what Mr. Trump presented as a grand bargain: North Korea would trade all its nuclear weapons, material and facilities for an end to the American-led sanctions squeezing its economy.

An American official later described this as “a proposal to go big,” a bet by Mr. Trump that his force of personality, and view of himself as a consummate dealmaker, would succeed where three previous presidents had failed.

View the complete March 2 article by David E. Sanger and Edward Wong on The New York Times website here.

Trump suffers disappointing setback with North Korea

President Trump suffered a significant blow on Thursday when his nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un unexpectedly collapsed.

Trump traveled halfway around the world to Vietnam on a mission to broker a historic nuclear accord with Kim, with whom he has spent more than a year building a personal relationship in order to deliver on his No. 1 foreign policy goal of ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons.

Instead, the self-styled negotiator in chief left the two-day summit with no deal after failing to persuade the North Korean strongman to commit to surrendering his arsenal.

View the complete February 28 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Trump-Kim summit ends with no agreement on denuclearization

President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s second summit ended without any agreement Thursday.

“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump said at a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. “This was just one of those times.”

Trump said the sticking point was sanctions, which Kim wanted lifted before taking all steps the United States was asking of him.

View the complete February 28 article by Rebecca Kheel on The Hill website here.

White House bans four journalists from covering Trump-Kim dinner because of shouted questions

President Trump disregarded a question about Michael Cohen after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Feb. 27. (The Washington Post)

HANOI — The White House abruptly banned four U.S. journalists from covering President Trump’s dinner here Wednesday with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un after some of them shouted questions at the leaders during their earlier meetings.

Reporters from the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Los Angeles Times and Reuters were excluded from covering the dinner because of what White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said were “sensitivities over shouted questions in the previous sprays.” Among the questions asked of Trump was one about the congressional testimony of his former lawyer Michael Cohen.

The White House’s move to restrict press access was an extraordinary act of retaliation by the U.S. government, which historically has upheld the rights of journalists while a president travels overseas. It was especially remarkable because it came during Trump’s meeting with the leader of a totalitarian state that does not have a free press.

View the complete February 27 article by Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.