The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump And Kim's Second Nuclear Summit Ends With No Deal

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un left their summit meeting on Thursday in Hanoi, Vietnam, without agreeing on a denuclearization deal. A planned signing ceremony was canceled. Trump also briefly addressed Michael Cohen's hearing on Capitol Hill. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, and White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, we've got some big news. The NPR politics team is going to be hitting the road. We will be in Atlanta, Georgia on March 8th, making a podcast live on stage. And we'd love to see you there. So head to nprpresents.org to grab a ticket and see you soon. Hi, this is Christina in Hanoi, Vietnam, where I'm stuck in traffic trying to get to work. My normal 14 minute drive is now in minute 48 as we ramp up to the summit between Kim Jong Un and my own dear president. And I have another two kilometers left to go. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which is recorded at 315 a.m. on, what day is it? Thursday, the 28th of February. Keep in mind that things may have changed by the time you hear it. All right, here's the show.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un left their summit in Hanoi with no agreement on denuclearization. We had some options, and at this time we decided not to do any of the options, and we'll see where that goes. But it was a very interesting two days, and I think actually it was a very productive two days, but sometimes you have to walk. As a wise man once said, you've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and I also cover the White House. It is a full White House team here. But Aisha, you are on the other side of the world with President Trump in Vietnam, currently in a motorcade. Is that right? Yes. On our way to the airport, about to get on Air Force

One and head out. But I had to talk to you guys first. Absolutely. So thank you for making this happen. The last few hours have been quite a whirlwind. There had been a signing ceremony on the president's schedule. That didn't happen. There was a press conference. It got moved up. Tell us about what it's been like for the last few hours. Yeah, I mean, the summit started and it seemed to be going along as normal. And then Trump was

saying that he wasn't in a rush. And he said something like, you know, I can't speak to today, but I think we'll have something long term. So he did seem to kind of be signaling that he didn't expect something today. But I think we thought that there would at least be some type of agreement. We were waiting for a working lunch, and we were waiting for a very long time, and then we were told that there had been a change of plans, and it became clear that we were going to be leaving without anything in writing or any type of commitment or agreement from either side. You know, heading into this, there had been a lot of questions like,

will the president just make a deal to make a deal? And, you know, a lot of foreign policy heads had been sort of worried about that. And now there is no deal. You know, it seems like maybe the political outcome and the foreign policy outcome are sort of different. It does seem like there's a difference. And what President Trump was saying was you have to know when to walk away. You can't basically just go along with a bad deal. Now, what I will say is we are over here in Vietnam.

This was not a quick trip. Even though it wasn't like the first summit where it was historic, where Trump and Kim had never met before, it's still a big deal. And so I don't know that the only options were a deal or no deal. Typically, what you would do before you came all the way across the world is you would have something worked out and you would know that you would be walking away with something. And if you couldn't reach a deal, you would kind of figure that out before you got here. And there was a White House team in Hanoi for the last week or so that had been trying to sort of nail down the points. And oftentimes you use the summit as kind of a forcing mechanism to really, you know, get everyone to sharpen their pencil and put their best offers

on the table. In this case, they obviously couldn't come to terms, so we're sort of in a holding pattern. Now, the president did say before traveling to Vietnam that he was not in a hurry so long as there was no renewed missile testing, no renewed nuclear testing. And he did say he got assurances from Kim Jong-un that he did not plan to restart missile tests or nuclear tests. At the same time, as the New York Times David Sanger pointed out during the news conference, the North Koreans are using this time to continue to expand their nuclear stockpile. So in some ways, the clock is ticking, even though the president says he's not feeling any real pressure. Can we dig in on sort of what Kim Jong-un came into that

room wanting, and what President Trump wanted, and why they couldn't connect? President Trump says North Korea was basically demanding a complete lifting of the international economic sanctions that have been putting pressure on Pyongyang. And in return, Kim Jong-un was only willing to guarantee limited curbs on North Korea's outlawed nuclear program. That wasn't good enough. And that's why President Trump says he ended these talks without an agreement. The president did end up having a press conference that lasted almost an hour. Ayesha, you got called on by the president. I did. I up having a press conference that lasted almost an hour. Aisha, you got called on by the president. I did. I was in a red shirt, so I think he couldn't miss me. And I was in the second row. So I did get called on. And I basically asked, you know,

was the president still going to require complete denuclearization? Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify, when you talk about what you would be willing to give up all of the sanctions for, are you still thinking that you want North Korea to give up everything to do complete, verifiable denuclearization before you lift sanctions? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't want to say that to you because I don't want to put myself in that position from the standpoint of negotiation. But, you know, we want a lot to be given up and we're given up and we'll have to, you know, we'll be helping them along economically.

Us and other many other countries are going to be helping. They're going to be in there. They're prepared to help. That is kind of stunning that, I mean, I think he went into this whole thing with Kim Jong-un as the U.S. policy being complete denuclearization, complete verifiable denuclearization. And now he's saying he doesn't want to be put in a box. Well, yeah, he seems to be kind of opening the door there saying, well, maybe they don't have to give up everything before we ease the sanctions. And Scott, you were in Singapore. Does that sound different to you? Yes. And the position at the outset before the Singapore summit was North Korea must completely denuclearize before the U.S. is willing to lift sanctions. And in the run up to this summit, there were some hints from the Trump team that while the core sanctions would remain in place

until there was complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization, there might be some wiggle room to take some goodwill-building measures before you saw that. And that seems to be what the president's talking about there. Although, as you could hear in his answer to Aisha, he's just reluctant to be pinned down. I think there was some concern among even hardliners in his own administration that maybe the president would cut a deal at this summit that would lift some sanctions and not get much in return. Obviously, we didn't see that, but he does seem to be leaving that door open. He did say that even though he's walking away, this was not

a storming out. This wasn't a walk away like you get up and walk out. No, this was very friendly. We shook hands. There's a warmth that we have. Now, I hope that stays. I think it will. He and Kim are still on good terms and leaving the door open to further talks. And I think that's an important point. Yeah, but we haven't heard from Kim. So I guess the question that I have is, does Kim feel the same way? And the president also suggested that he's not planning to, for example, resume joint military exercises with the South Koreans.

So it's kind of a holding pattern from the North Korean side as well. And he said he's not planning necessarily to have a third summit anytime soon. I mean, you know, coming into this, there were people that were worried he would just make a deal. So is this ultimately a good news story that the president didn't make a bad deal? I think that there are experts who are concerned that he was going to kind of give away the store in return for nothing or in return for not very much will be relieved that that didn't happen. But there is a question now of like, where do you go from here? And you have this kind of big summit. How can you have another one?

So now, OK, we're in this holding pattern. How do you get out of it? Trump has talked from his art of the deal book about just what he said today, that you have to be willing to walk away. And so in some ways, he has demonstrated he does have that willingness. Important because we're anticipating another major summit as early as next month, possibly at Mar-a-Lago with Chinese President Xi Jinping. And there have been some of the same concerns there. Will Trump cut a trade deal that maybe is not adequate just for the sake of making a deal? In a way, maybe this kind of is a signal to President Xi, I'm not going to do that. If you want to make a deal, you better be prepared to

bring something to the table. Okay, so where does this all go from here? Well, that's a good question. I kind of asked the President that because, you know, until there's a deal reached, North Korea will continue developing its weapons program. And basically what President Trump said is that there will be no more testing. Are you concerned if you're not able to reach an agreement that the testing will start again or that in that while all of this time? Well, he said the testing, yeah, continuing to develop their program. He said the testing will not start. He said that he's not going to do testing of rockets or missiles or anything having to do with nuclear. And all I can tell you is that's what he said. And we'll see.

This is important. There hasn't been any nuclear or missile tests by the North Koreans since 2017 now. So that that is what something the Trump administration sees as a major accomplishment. Ayesha, word is you are basically at the airport, so we're going to have to let you go. Yes, I will talk to you guys later. Thanks so much for talking to me. I've got to get on this 20-hour flight. All right. We'll see you on the other side.

Okay. There are a couple of other things that came up at this press conference that we want to get into. One is what President Trump said to Kim Jong-un about Otto Warmbier, the young American who had been held there for a long time and ended up being released and dying almost immediately. And also what President Trump said about yesterday's Michael Cohen hearing. All of that after a quick break. Human behavior doesn't always make a ton of sense, at least on the surface. I said, would you mind if I give the dogs a little piece of cracker with some hot sauce on it and without and see what they choose?

Hidden Brain, a spicy podcast about science, psychology, and why people do what they do. And we're back. And Scott Horsley, it's just you and me here. The traffic is starting to clear in Hanoi and Aisha's on her winging away home. Yes. And one thing that came up was Otto Warmbier, the young American who was imprisoned in North Korea and irreparably harmed during that time. And he was asked by

Washington Post reporter David Nakamura whether that came up in conversations with Kim Jong-un. I did speak to him. He felt very badly, but he knew the case very well. But he knew it later. And, you know, you've got a lot of people, a big country, a lot of people. And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really, really bad things. But he tells me, he tells me that he didn't know about it. And I will take him at his word. That has sort of a familiar ring to it, doesn't it? It does. President Trump has used similar terminology when talking about his conversations with the crown prince in Saudi Arabia regarding the killing of the journalist

Jamal Khashoggi, and also in how he talked about what Vladimir Putin told him about Russian election interference. It is interesting, though, because the president, you know, has talked about Otto Warmbier. He highlighted the Warmbier family in his State of the Union speech last year. Now the White House prefers to talk about Americans who have been released safely from North Korea as a sign of sort of improving relations between Washington and Pyongyang. Now, the thing that we were all waiting for leading up to this press conference was, what will President Trump say about the day-long hearing with Michael Cohen in the House Oversight Committee? And he was only asked one question about it. What's your response to Michael Cohen?

Well, it's incorrect. The reporter was Jonathan Karl from ABC News. He lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing. He said, no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, I wonder why he didn't just lie about that too, like he did about everything else. I mean, he lied about so many different things, And I was actually impressed that he didn't say, well, I think there was collusion for this reason or that. He didn't say that. He said no collusion. He definitely found the parts that he wanted to hear in Cohen's testimony. And there were

parts of Cohen's testimony that were beneficial to him. The president actually exaggerated a little bit the extent to which Cohen spoke about collusion. Michael Cohen said he wasn't aware of any collusion and that he had no direct evidence that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, but he also suggested he had his suspicions. There were other parts of Cohen's testimony that were favorable to the president, but in general, Trump tried to put the most favorable spin on what his former lawyer had said while also attacking Cohen's credibility. That was also the tack that most of the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee took yesterday. Yeah. And just I don't know that this is media

observation or whatever, but the president called on a lot of foreign reporters in this press conference who asked policy questions about China and North Korea and Japan and all of these other issues. I mean, he was at a summit in Hanoi regarding North Korean nuclear matters. So maybe it makes sense that there weren't a ton of questions about Cohen, but it was sort of a surprise. The president did, however, call on a lot of American reporters, and with the exception of John Carl, they mostly stayed focused on the talks in Hanoi, as opposed to what was going on back here in Washington. I almost wonder if the fact that the president walked away from the table here was more surprising, and therefore more of a subject for questions than sort of a partial nuclear deal might have been. Had there been more of a deal, perhaps we would have heard more questions about

Michael Cohen. There is another podcast in your feed from not that many hours ago all about the Cohen hearing. We really don't know how that is going to play out, what impact it's going to have. The president hasn't even tweeted about it yet. He is on a plane now flying back. And tomorrow, we are going to record our regular weekly roundup a day late. So keep your eyes on this podcast feed. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horslake. I also cover the White House. And Ayesha Roscoe also covers the White House and was with us earlier. And thank you for listening

to the NPR Politics Podcast.