Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
I'll give him credit for being able to bring Kim to the table, but that's as far as it goes with me. The disgraced Richard Nixon was responsible for a thawing of US/China relations back in the 70s and every President should be able to get a few things in the credit column to measure against the many in the debit one - Trump has something in the credit column now in my opinion, but he needs a lot more on top of this before I'll start to change my, very critical, opinion of the man.
No previous presidents met because North Korea wouldn't make the concessions that the US wanted, although NK were certainly looking for the prestige of being equals on the world stage. The US knew how much they wanted it and asked for more than NK was willing to give, be it human rights, peace treaty, denuclearisation, etc.

In short, a meeting would happen once the countries were close to a deal. But trump just said yeah go on then to the meeting, and under these circumstances it's actually not much of an achievement. NK were always going to accept. The two haven't even agreed what denuclearisation of the peninsular means. Bringing Kim to the table in this fashion was shooting fish in a barrel, although better than nothing.

We'll see how big a mistake it was to give up a precious bargaining chip so lightly.