Trump: "There's A Substantial Chance" North Korea Summit Won't Work Out

Donald Trump

The New York Times is reporting Donald Trump's much-ballyhooed summit meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Un, may not take place as scheduled.

“There’s a very substantial chance that it won’t work out,” Mr. Trump told reporters before a meeting in the Oval Office with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in. “It may not work out for June 12.”

Mr. Trump expressed continued enthusiasm for the diplomatic encounter, saying he believed it could usher in a period of prosperity for North Korea. But he acknowledged that recent statements by North Korea had cast a pall of uncertainty over the timing of the meeting, which is set for Singapore. He appeared as baffled as anyone else about what might come next.

“We’re moving along. We’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said. “There are certain conditions we want to happen. I think we’ll get those conditions. And if we don’t, we won’t have the meeting.

“If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later,” he added. “Maybe it will happen at a different time. We will see. We are talking.”

According to Vox, a big part of the problem is South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Moon is a leftist who took office in May of last year, back when Trump was threatening war with North Korea. He made a deep and concerted effort to try to broker negotiations between Trump and Kim to defuse the tension, and part of his strategy was making grandiose promises about what talks could accomplish — even floating the possibility that Trump could win a Nobel Prize to entice him to the table.

The problem, as Kelly points out, is that this was always a kind of shell game: Moon could never change the fact that the US and North Korea want fundamentally different things. Basically, he argues, this was a gambit to try to convince Trump not to go to war with North Korea — one that may yet fail.

JUST IN: President Trump says North Korea summit "may not work out for June 12," but adds "there is a good chance that we'll have the meeting." pic.twitter.com/jdUzdUnvtl

— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 22, 2018

Gonna be wild when the WH cancels the North Korea summit and NK responds by uploading sound files of every phone conversation Trump has had over the last year and a half.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 21, 2018

North Korea Threatens To Cancel Summit Over U.S./South Korea Air Force Drills

North Korea has suspended talks with South Korea and declared that next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump could be cancelled over upcoming joint Air Force drills taking place in South Korea with the U.S. Air Force.

North Korea has always expressed displeasure at the annual joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises. But apparently, with the U.S. summit so close on the calendar, North Korea must have had different expectations this year.

From The Washington Post:

The South Korean and U.S. militaries had scaled back and played down the exercises, declining the news media the usual access to the drills. North Korea barely said a word about the drills during the computer simulation exercises that took place through April.

The two-week-long Max Thunder drills between the two countries’ Air Forces, an annual event that began on Friday, have, however, clearly struck a nerve in North Korea.

“This exercise targeting us, which is being carried out across South Korea, is a flagrant challenge to the Panmunjom Declaration and an intentional military provocation running counter to the positive political development on the Korean Peninsula,” the North's Korean Central News Agency said in a report published early.

The Max Thunder exercise involves about 100 warplanes, including eight F-22 radar-evading fighters and an unspecified number of B-52 bombers and F-15K jets, according to the South’s main Yonhap News Agency. During last year's Max Thunder exercises, U.S. and South Korean fighter jets flew an average 60 sorties a day to showcase their firepower.

JUST IN: The White House was caught off guard by the warning from North Korea about military drills, according to aides https://t.co/6mp4jMAca6 pic.twitter.com/PTSkxfudhN

— CNN (@CNN) May 15, 2018

BREAKING: North Korea backs out of high level talks with South Korea due their joint military drills with the US.

They also threw the Trump-Kim summit into doubt.

Trump is about to be humiliated by Kim Jung Un and the North Koreans on the world stage. Sad!!!

— Travis Allen 🌊 (@TravisAllen02) May 15, 2018

Are we surprised that North Korea is acting like North Korea?

— Travis J. Tritten (@Travis_Tritten) May 15, 2018