As Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross into North Korea at 3:45 p.m. local time on Sunday, the man walking next to him, Kim Jong Un, grinned and applauded. That should have been no surprise: Trump had just delivered to the North Korean leader a degree of global recognition and acceptance that Kim’s father and grandfather could not have imagined.
The question is what Trump might get in return. As he heads into his 2020 reelection campaign, the president is aware that he needs to make good on years of braggadocio about his deal-making skills. On Saturday, he restarted the faltering U.S.-China trade talks in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Japan. The next day, almost as if he were dropping in on an old friend in town—“Great friendships have been made,” Trump said later—he tweeted a casual plea to Kim to meet him at the treaty village of Panmunjom, a concertina-wired focus of high tensions since the Korean War paused there 66 years ago. Kim showed up, Mao suit and all, looking a bit baffled but game.
The question is what Trump might get in return. As he heads into his 2020 reelection campaign, the president is aware that he needs to make good on years of braggadocio about his deal-making skills. On Saturday, he restarted the faltering U.S.-China trade talks in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Japan. The next day, almost as if he were dropping in on an old friend in town—“Great friendships have been made,” Trump said later—he tweeted a casual plea to Kim to meet him at the treaty village of Panmunjom, a concertina-wired focus of high tensions since the Korean War paused there 66 years ago. Kim showed up, Mao suit and all, looking a bit baffled but game.
