Just two weeks before this Trump was touting his nuclear disarmament deal with Kim Jung Un ahead of the 2018 congressional elections. Here we’re told that the summit in which the leaders were expected to sign an agreement is canceled.
Trump never intended this to be a diplomatic initiative. Rather it was an “and the kitchen sink” move orchestrated by Putin to give Trump a decisive “win” before the inevitable day of reckoning in the Russia probe. Think. Kim does an abrupt about face on nuclear disarmament AND reunification shortly after meetings with Russia and China, reversing decades old policy. Kim credits fear of strongman Trump as the catalyst (laughable) and South Korea stops just short of nominating Trump for the Nobel peace prize (even funnier). Ideally these developments would have occurred after Trump’s meeting with Kim but the Cohen, Daniels and Cambridge Analytica scandals and the Mueller investigation are rapidly approaching crisis-level (for Trump). So fast forward: the outcomes of planned negotiations are announced before the negotiations themselves. But this does not have the desired effect so Putin out of disgust or capriciousness abandons the move and looks to his always-intended interference in our next elections to achieve his goal of 2 to 6 more years of his proxy President. Trump, set adrift with no (Putin) playbook, calls off the summit. Kim, at worse, loses out on Putin’s promised reward. Better, in his role of victim of an unpredictable Goliath, he gets a few sympathy points where they matter. China, in a win-win position either way, shrugs and exits stage left with the ZTE concession and the upper hand in the trade war. The South Korea leader, now more popular than ever at home and abroad, sighs at the lost of what could have been. The United States to the rest of the world looks like the indecisive and untrustworthy bungler we are under Trump. Meanwhile counting down to November, State has spent $0 of $120M allocated to protect the upcoming elections.