Today, Explained - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

After months of name calling and test missiles, Donald Trump will be the first sitting United States president to meet with a North Korean leader. Vox’s Yochi Dreazen lays out what to expect from the historic meeting. Plus, he shares some negotiation tips for President Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey Bridget, I got you something. Oh my god, what is this? Check it out, open it up. Okay. Uh, Quip. Did you get me the toothbrush? It's as thin as a regular toothbrush, but how do you turn it on? It's as thin as a regular toothbrush, folks.

It's, oh my goodness. This is very exciting. This is about the coolest toothbrush I've ever seen. Wow. Getquip.com slash explained. The coolest toothbrush Bridget's ever seen. I'm going to go use it right now. President Donald Trump accepted the invitation from North Korea. That's right. And as we come on the air right now,

late-breaking details about that meeting that will happen by May. Yogi Drizin, foreign and national security editor at Vox. Donald Trump is going to be the first sitting president to meet with a leader of North Korea. These are words I never thought I would say in that particular order. And being on four hours of sleep, they're words I never thought I would hear in that order.

Were you surprised last night to get that news? In all honesty, I was not. I had actually money riding on this. Part of it is degenerate gambling problem. But the idea of Trump sitting with Kim Jong-un, they're so similar in some weird ways. Although Kim Jong-un, all jokes aside, is probably the more rational and better prepared.

But I actually am not surprised. Like this seems sort of quintessential Trump. Is being Donald Trump being free of all of the sort of hangups of following diplomacy and going through your secretary of state, even who he told just a few months ago that he was wasting his time on Twitter by trying to negotiate with North Korea.

Is being Donald Trump kind of being like Randy Quaid in Independence Day? You're just like ride your plane directly into the alien ship and solve the problem? Hello, boys! I'm back! That's such an awesome reference. Thank you. And now I'll have the mental image of Trump as Randy Quaid on the plane waving goodbye. I think there are two concerns with Trump having these kind of talks. One, if you just disdain the idea of diplomacy and you

don't like experts and you're walking into somebody who is a master negotiator and really well-prepared, there's a real chance you just get played. I think the bigger issue is Trump vacillates always from extreme to extreme to extreme. If you have that level of unpredictability in talks, it can get really bad really soon. I've covered these kinds of summits before. And usually what happens is there are months of low-level preparation talks, but every detail is hashed out well in advance. Now this is going to happen in less than two months by a guy who hates details. Let's, I guess, get into how exactly this happened, because even though the president has sort of spontaneously decided that he's going to go meet with Kim Jong-un, there were diplomatic steps that had to take place. So where did this

start exactly? So there's a school of thought that says that the lapping of threats might have actually helped. That Kim Jong-un, like his father before him, felt like he understood American presidents. He knew how they operated and how they thought. And none of them would ever really go to war. Okay. Then they saw Trump and was like, holy hell, this guy might actually go to war. And there's a school of thought that maybe that sort of pushed them both back from the brink. On the face of it, North Korea does seem to have made some concessions.

It's agreed to talk about denuclearization, and it says it will freeze its nuclear and missile tests. But that's reversible. And if these talks go ahead, then the reward for North Korea is huge. This really goes back to the Olympics. Mike Pence, who was sent by Trump to represent the U.S., said afterwards that he had tried to arrange a secret meeting with the North Koreans. Kim Jong-un had, in this kind of masterstroke of diplomacy, first agreed that he would do a joint team of athletes with the South. Shared a women's hockey team. Exactly, which didn't do very well as a team. But it was a masterstroke of beautiful sort of Kim Jong-un diplomacy. At the Olympics, you had Mike Pence, you had Kim Jong-un's sister,

and this other delegation. Those talks fell through. But what they signaled was Kim Jong-un was open to talk, as was Trump, even if they weren't saying so publicly. Flash forward. Kim Jong-un invites a South Korean delegation to Pyongyang. When was that? Right after the Olympics closed. They went there this week and had two days of meetings in Pyongyang. This had never happened before either. And they were photographed shaking hands with Kim Jong-un. He looked very kind of giddy and welcoming.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has met officials from the South for the first time since he came to power upon the death of his father in 2011. The two sides are believed to be discussing the easing of tensions, which started with breakthrough meetings at the Winter Olympics, and the possibility of encouraging talks between North Korea and the United States.

And the key thing is Kim Jong-un is willing to discuss giving up his nukes, which has always been the big thing hanging over talks. So that led to the South Koreans visiting the White House last night. Yeah. Donald Trump popped his head into the briefing room and said, there's an off-the-record big announcement coming. Couldn't help himself. Like the press secretary usually does that.

And then said, actually, no, no, no, you can report that. Just don't use my photo. Then the South Koreans come out of the White House, are standing in the driveway where, like, Nancy Pelosi normally does a press conference, and they announce the meeting. Yeah. I told President Trump that in our meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he is committed to denuclearization.

And he expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible. South Korea just had a change of leadership. Can we assume that this wouldn't have been happening if it weren't for that change of leadership too? I think that's exactly right. I mean, South Korea has a new president, Moon Jae-in, who came into office saying, I'm going to be hard on North Korea for its nuclear program, but there are other areas where we could talk. So he's conciliatory to a degree. Okay. He and Trump have a sort of interesting relationship.

But what Moon Jae-in has been able to do is sort of persuade Trump almost single-handedly to change his North Korean policy. So we in the S don't always think about South Korean leaders. We don't often know their name. We should know his name because this has Moon Jae-in's fingerprints all over it. It's amazing that this is actually a result of the Olympics. And they may have actually brought North Korea, South Korea, and the United States together to have this unprecedented meeting. The sort of interesting single moment to me was Kim Jong-un sending his sister. The North Korean Ivanka Trump, they were calling her. She charmed South Korea. It was interesting to watch the coverage. When the announcement was first made

that the North Koreans and South Koreans would meet and share a team, a lot of South Koreans were furious. They felt like, why the hell are we giving all this up to a guy who just tested a nuclear weapon, who's given us nothing in return? Right. Then they saw the North Korean Ivanka Trump. And it also is a signal that North Korea is not, you know, this crazy, weird, former Cold War state, but that it too has young women that are capable and are the future leadership. Suddenly it was like, oh, she's so glamorous and seems so normal and sane.

Yeah. And so it kind of changed just by virtue of her being the one who went. We should note that this isn't the first time the North Koreans have offered to sit down with a US president, right? Is this, I mean, as far as I know, this is something that happens almost regularly.

So they've wanted this for decades. They want to be seen as a major power. And there's nothing that conveys that better than being photographed sitting next to an American president shaking hands. Because what that says to the world and to his own people is, look, I am now an equal of the great American superpower. So they've wanted this for 20 odd years. Trump's the only one to give it to them, which is surprising. Since what president have they been saying, hey, let's talk, you and me? So they've been talking about this since the Bill Clinton presidency. Clinton was the only president who actually came close to going. The key thing there was Clinton thought about going

only at the end of his presidency, after there'd been years of talks. Compare that to Trump, who wants to go in the first 15 months of his presidency after no talks. What happens after Clinton? I mean, it's under the second Bush presidency where we get this axis of evil alignment, right? States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. With Bush, it's interesting because he comes in, he lumps North Korea in with Iran and Iraq, which is silly in a whole lot of different ways. Bush was also willing to talk. So the U.S. had negotiations with the North Koreans under George W. Bush. They just didn't go anywhere. Obama came in and said, we are not going to do what George W. Bush did. We're not

going to have years of talks that go nowhere. But Obama didn't do very much in terms of diplomacy. And then Donald Trump came in, talked about fire and fury. There was genuine terror about war. And now Trump has kind of gone back in a strange way to where Clinton was in terms of talks, with the key difference being Clinton was a detail guy, spent years preparing, was only willing to go at the end. Trump, non-details guy, willing to go now. Trump obviously wants the huge deal. He wants to go for the home run. What exactly is the home run when it comes to North Korea? That's after the break. This is Today Explained.

Have you ever been more excited to go use a toothbrush? You know what? I can't say I have. This is, I'm really excited. This is the magic of Quip. Oh, okay, I've got my little Quip anti- Oh, and it came with toothpaste. Mint anti-cavity toothpaste. Let's go. Let's do it. We're going to brush our teeth.

Okay, Bridget, I didn't introduce you. I should say that you are the editor of Today Explained. Right. Okay, good. Who's very excited to brush your teeth. Perfect. Okay, here we are going to the all-gender restroom so I can witness Bridget's first use of her Quip electric toothbrush. Okay, getting the brush wet. Here we go. Moment of truth.

Okay, now the question is, do I put it in my mouth before I... Oh, I think you hit, do I put it in my mouth before I... Oh, I think you hit start first. Is it going? How's that vibration? It's very... It's very hard to talk with the people in my mouth. Okay, fair.

But it's very gentle. I can't even hear it. Oh, there it is. Yeah, a little hum. This is really cool. Okay, I think I'm done. Getquip.com slash explained. Thanks, Bridget. Thank you. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. This is Today Explained. Before the break, Yogi Drizin said President Trump has made this historic decision to meet with Kim Jong-un because he's looking for a home run with North Korea. So we should probably talk about what that home run looks like. The ideal for Trump, the thing that every American president has wanted,

is North Korea gives up every nuclear weapon it has. And every time there's been an agreement, and there have been deals before, the North Koreans have broken them. So Clinton signed a deal where he would give them reactors. This is a good deal for the United States. North Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program. South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons. And then the North Koreans built more weapons anyway. Same with Bush. They've just been cheating and cheating for decades. U.S. policy is they give up their nuclear weapons. The dork Wong phrases denuclearization. The North is now saying again, hey, we're open to that. What they want back is the U.S. to recognize the legitimacy of their government, to not threaten them, maybe some economic stuff. So they're saying we're open to

it. But no one who looks at this believes they actually would give them up because for the North, this is their insurance policy. If they have nuclear weapons, they can believe the U.S. would never really attack them. Realistically, what Trump might be able to get if he accepts it is a freeze. He might be able to get the North Koreans to say, we're going to stop here and we'll give you access to our sites. You can see what we have and you could see that we're not building more. If they offer a freeze, most of Trump's advisors would say, take it. The question is, would he take it? North Korea seems to gain so much by having nuclear weapons. It feels very hard to believe that they would trade it all away for the easing of sanctions

or something like that. It's part of the reason why I just honestly don't imagine that they would. I think we often think of North Korea as this mad country locked off away, run by this guy with strange hair. But they have built extraordinarily advanced chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons, and missiles. They now have the ability to hit the United States with a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, kind of like what the Soviet Union had. That's a game changer.

Like realistically, they could nuke an American city. That was never the case in prior times where the US was open to talks. Kim Jong-un, despite how he's mocked here, is a very rational man. And if you're a rational man, having nukes is the most rational decision you could possibly make. The idea that he would suddenly go irrational and say, no, no, no, no, you take them, I'm done. It's just really hard to believe or to imagine happening. So why, why, why do you think he's doing it? I think he feels like he could get a lot from this president. I think he feels like no US president before would have had the ego to think they could do this. There's a playbook for Donald Trump, flatter him, make him feel like he's really important. And I think Kim Jong-un feels like, hey, I could charm this guy.

I charm the South Koreans, put me in a room with him. I'll say, Mr. President, you are such a master dealmaker. You're the only one who can make this kind of deal. I think Kim Jong-un feels like he could get a lot, sanctions relief, better relationships with the world, for very little. Maybe right now, here, you and I can offer him some advice for how to deal with this meeting in May with North Korea. How would you approach Kim Jong-un?

Let's do three pieces of advice for President Donald Trump from Vox's foreign editor, Yogi Drisen. I think start with small talk about basketball. Okay. Because that's the one weird area where he likes American culture. Bring up Dennis Rodman. Bring him with you. Have him be the envoy.

Okay, all Rodman aside, number one. I think you would begin by saying, we do not want war. We recognize your government is legitimate. We recognize your nuclear power program, your nuclear weapons. We recognize you've done this. We do not want war. We're not going to try to topple your government, but you cannot threaten us with these weapons. And if you do, and if you ever launch something at us, even as a test, we will eradicate your country.

That's a good icebreaker. Yeah, exactly. Then, you know, from there you go to the small talk. All right. How do you follow up? What's number two? You kind of go back to the first point and say back, you're the legitimate ruler of your government. We are willing to recognize you. We're willing to have you back to the first point and say back, you're the legitimate ruler of your government. We are willing to recognize you. We're willing to have you come to the United States in theory, provided that you start to do verifiable things. And we can do them together. So you allow us to see your nuclear sites.

We will cancel all military drills with the South. You start moving towards verified freezing of your program. We start to lift sanctions. You get to a place where you have a peace deal with South Korea. We may be open to removing some of the U.S. troops in South Korea. But you have to be specific, point by point by point. The fear is Trump doesn't like details, so he might just go, all right, Kim, let's just do it.

You give up your nuclear program, I lift sanctions, good, we're done here. And that's a problem because Kim Jong-un plausibly might say, oh yeah, I'll denuclearize. Sure. No problem. I've said that before. Yeah. And the minute Trump leaves the room, high five his advisors because he feels like this guy has no idea what he agreed to. Number three.

At the end of the day, you, Kim Jong-un, need to have a peace deal with the South. You need to have a peace deal with Japan. It isn't just us. Yeah. You need to be serious about a peace deal with your neighbor in the South. You need to have the DMZ and not be the most dangerous place on Earth. Right. You need to not have 10,000 artillery pieces aimed at Seoul. So you need to get something for the south, because otherwise the south,

even though they're pro these talks right now, will turn against them pretty quickly. Joachim Driessen, thank you so much. Thanks, Sean. Joachim Driessen hosts the Worldly Podcast at Voxx he's on twitter at yohidrizin you can find today explained on twitter too we are at today underscore explained today explained is produced in association with stitcher and we're part of the vox media podcast network the unprecedented breakmaster cylinder makes music for us our executive executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vanderplug produce. Afim Shapiro is our engineer. And Bridget McCarthy is our editor.

Okay, the post-toothbrushing interview here. Okay. How was it? It was amazing. Really? Yeah, my teeth feel better than they ever have. Great. Okay. Electric toothbrushes start at $25 at getquip.com slash explained and your first refill pack is free. Thanks Quip. Thanks Quip.