Tag: Donald Trump

It is looking more and more like not much is going to come out of the Trump-Kim II Summit:

Anchor: U.S. President Donald Trump said sanctions will remain on North Korea and he is not in a rush to remove the regimes’ nuclear arsenal. Instead, ahead of his planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump tried to highlight what the North can achieve through denuclearization. 
Kim Bum-soo has more on Trump’s latest news conference.

Report: Ahead of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this month, U.S. President Donald Trump has again highlighted the economic potential of the reclusive state.

[Sound bite: US President Donald Trump] 
“… we think that North Korea and Chairman Kim have a tremendous potential as an economic force, economic power.  Their location between South Korea and then Russia and China — right smack in the middle — is phenomenal.”

Speaking during a White House news conference on Friday, the American president addressed a wide range of issues, including the denuclearization of North Korea. 

[Sound bite: US President Donald Trump] 
“But we hope we’re going to be very much equally as successful.  I’m in no rush for speed.  We just don’t want testing.  The sanctions, as you know, remain.  Everything is remaining.” 

Just a day earlier, U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo hinted that at the upcoming meeting Washington may be more focused on further easing the military tension on the peninsula rather than immediately lifting sanctions.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if President Trump is given briefing notes to review before he talks because this is a big difference in numbers he misstated:

U.S. President Donald Trump said South Korea’s payment for the U.S. troop presence will increase further only days after both sides signed a one-year deal for the defense cost sharing. 

“Working with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, they (South Korea) agreed to pay, yesterday, $500 million (560 billion) more toward their defense,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting, Tuesday (local time).

On Sunday, Seoul and Washington signed the one-year provisional deal on defense cost sharing, called the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) for the upkeep of United States Forces Korea (USFK).

Under the 2019 SMA, the South will pay 1.04 trillion won toward the upkeep of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops here, up 8.2 percent from the previous year. This is an increase of 78.7 billion won, compared with last year, not the amount stated by Trump.

It remains unclear why the U.S. president made the remark with such an obviously factual error. But it is highly likely that he overstated the amount to score a political point there and raise his approval rating.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The long speculated on second Trump-Kim summit is set:

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be held in Vietnam Feb. 27-28 with the talks to center on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
The date and venue had been shrouded in secrecy as the two countries negotiated the next steps following a vague denuclearization deal reached at their first summit in Singapore in June.
“Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong-un is a good one,” Trump said during his State of the Union address.

Yonhap

I wonder what the Chinese government thinks of the summit being in Vietnam considering their past brief military war and current territorial disputes in the South China Sea? This is a growing indication of how much the US-Vietnam relationship continues to positively develop which I would think the Chinese government would not be happy about.

"Art" display in Seoul–#KimJongUn
with a gun pointed at Trump, who is on the floor. Is this "artist" Lim Young-sun on #MoonJaein admin's "white list," receiving #SouthKorean tax payers money? https://t.co/88G8uowoC3

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) December 22, 2018

This probably should be considered a good thing that the Trump administration is not in a hurry to cut a deal with North Korea for little to nothing in return:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. is “in no hurry” to negotiate with North Korea.

On Twitter, Trump wrote that “many people have asked how we are doing in our negotiations with North Korea” and that he “always reply by saying we are in no hurry.”

Trump added there is “wonderful potential for great economic success” for North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un “sees it better than anyone and will fully take advantage of it for his people.”

He maintained an optimistic outlook, saying “we are doing just fine.”

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

The only problem with this is that Kim Jong-un’s wish is to keep his nukes and have sanctions dropped:

US President Donald Trump will grant North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un his wishes if he delivers on denuclearisation, the South Korean president said Sunday, following talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

As officials work to arrange a second meeting between Trump and Kim, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in relayed a message to reporters given to him by the US president to pass on to the North’s leader.

“And the message was that President Trump has a very friendly view of Chairman Kim and that he likes him, and so he wishes Chairman Kim would implement the rest of their agreement and that he would make what Chairman Kim wants come true,” Moon told the Yonhap news agency while en route to New Zealand.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest from the Trump administration on North Korea’s denuclearization:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday during a campaign rally in Illinois that he doesn’t care how long North Korean denuclearization takes as long as there is no nuclear testing.

The remark was made as denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang remain deadlocked and a month after Trump said it “doesn’t matter” if it takes “two years, three years of five months” for the North to denuclearize.

Trump’s refusal to set a time frame seems to ignore North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s thinking on the issue. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in September, shortly after his third summit with Kim, that Kim mentioned his regime was willing to give up its nuclear arsenal by the end of Trump’s term in January 2021.

“I don’t care,” Trump said during the Illinois rally. “I tell my people, I couldn’t care how long, as long as there’s no testing, as long as there’s no nuclear testing.”

Trump boasted of his “great relationship” with Kim and how both sides were happy with each other, rebuking critics who say his administration isn’t moving fast enough to get the denuclearization job done.

“North Korea’s going to be a great economic place,” Trump said, again painting a rosy future for the North if it gives up its nuclear weapons. “The location is so good between Russia and China and South Korea.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

This was a pretty blunt reaction by President Trump to South Korea’s proposal to drop sanctions on North Korea:

South Korea on Thursday walked back on a proposal to lift some of its unilateral sanctions against North Korea following U.S. President Donald Trump’s blunt retort that Seoul could “do nothing” without Washington’s approval.

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha had said on Wednesday that Seoul was considering lifting measures applied after a deadly attack in 2010 that killed 46 South Korean sailors. She cited the intent to create more diplomatic momentum for talks over North Korea’s nuclear program.

South Korean conservatives reacted with anger as well, and Kang’s ministry downplayed her comments later, saying in a statement that the government has yet to start a “full-fledged” review of sanctions, meaning no decision was imminent.

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a parliamentary audit on Thursday there has been no serious consideration given to lifting the sanctions and that doing so would be hard unless North Korea acknowledges responsibility for the 2010 attack. North Korea has fiercely denied it sank the Cheonan warship.  (………..)

“They won’t do that without our approval,” Trump said of the comments. “They do nothing without our approval.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but it appears there may be some friction coming out of the White House over President Moon’s willingness to push for dropping sanctions for little to nothing in return from North Korea.

Trump just said in his W Virginia speech that he “loves” Kim Jong Un, & his audience clapped. Seriously. WTH has happened to the GOP? It’s just unrecognizable. This is why I’m so resistant to T’s diplomacy w/ NK. He’s doing it for all the wrong reasons – flattery, admiration, /1

— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) September 30, 2018

Just like President Trump is claimed in Woodward’s book to have been exploring the ordering of a preemptive strike on North Korea, what is the big deal if he was likewise exploring the option of removing dependents from South Korea?

Woodward writes that Trump even proposed sending a tweet declaring that he was ordering all U.S. military dependents out of South Korea, an act that would likely be read in North Korea as a signal that the United States was preparing for war.

The tweet never went out.

On Dec. 3, after another North Korean ICBM test, Sen. Lindsay Graham advocated removing U.S. troops’ families from South Korea in an interview. The book says that, the following day, McMaster was informed that Ri Su-yong, a vice chairman of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee and director of the committee’s International Affairs Department, told intermediaries “that the North would take the evacuation of U.S. civilians as a sign of imminent attack.”

Hence, withdrawing the dependents of American troops should be “one of the last cards to play,” and the possible tweets were described by Woodward as having “scared the daylights out of the Pentagon leadership,” Defense Secretary James Mattis and Dunford.

Graham, in a change of heart, was said to have advised Trump in a phone call in January that a decision to withdraw U.S. troops’ families is “hard to go back” on, and that it would “rock the South Korean stock market and the Japanese economy.” When asked by Trump if he should delay such an evacuation, Graham, who has been a hard-liner on the North, was quoted as telling him, “I don’t think you should ever start this process unless you’re ready to go to war.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

If what is discussed in Woodward’s book is true, Trump like many people not familiar with the situation, may have thought removing dependents would be a good idea to make sure a preemptive strike option could be executed if needed.  Clearly his aides and Senator Graham advised him otherwise of the difficulties and ramifications of removing dependents from South Korea and the President decided otherwise.