Page 134 - Gorbachev News Today

>> well, you know, im a skeptic that he plans a significant transformation of the north korean economy. but he is savvy. he understands how western media works, and i think hes doing a pretty effective propaganda job. so i do think that hes intelligent. hes aware of how hes perceived abroad and he does have a natural feel of how we react. im not sure im willing to imagine hes a north korean gorbachev. >> that comparison, of course, when i think back to 1985, being in geneva, watching gorbachev a...

Im being generous here with 1%. >> let me introduce keir simmons who knows this region better than anybody at nbc news. weigh in on everything weve talked about. we pyed former cia director john brennan who said president trump has been duped. we started the show with donald trump saying hes going to know in the first minute how this is going to go down. were having a debate 0% to 1% chance the secretary of states goal of complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula. >> yeah, let me just qu...

Advisers talked about what was happening at the g7. president trump and his friends agreed to something, and then he got on the plane and reneged something. the north koreans presumably said it about the iran deal, as well. if the u.s. and president trump signs an agreement, is it worth the paper its written on? how can we trust this man? of course, the u.s. is saying, how can it trust north korea, which has a long, long record of breaking agreements. you have to look back to 1994. some of the n...

If we hear that there is a communique agreement, that north korea has agreed to complete denuclearization with a timeline, thats going well. okay? if we hear just empty words, saying eventually when everything is well, we might denuclearize, not so well. >> the squishier the language, less well its going, in other words. >> cannotexactly. i want to go to you. youve listed four steps the summit would need to have a successful meeting. one of the things you said was patience. what do you mean ther...

Finish he had hoped for. >> but there was a big finish in moscow in may 1988. walking through red square with gorbachev, reagan was asked whether he still thought russia s an evil empire. >> i was talking to another time and another era. >> again, there was no trevor but reagan spent time pushing for human rights in russia. setting the stage for future. >> is u.s. official become increasingly certain there will be no big agreements are playing up the presidents contact with the soviet people. sa...

Spending together. >> there were no breakthroughs but the leaders decided they could do business. 11 months later they held a snap summit in iceland. gorbachev offered massive arms cuts but only reagan gave up the star wars missile defense plan. reagan refused and walked out. u.s. russian relations went into the deep freeze. but the deadlock in iceland led to deals a year later. they signed an historic agreement to eliminate all medium missiles in europe although star wars still blocked long-ran...

Ambassador, the word that keeping coming up is. >> req avich was their first summit. it was very dramatic. they talked about eliminating all nuclear weapons, and then it failed because president reagan would not talk about putting limits on missile defenses at the same time. at the moment, it was considered a failure because there was no agreement. but over the long term, it actually turned out broadband a positive meeting reagan took measure of the new leader and decided he was something he cou...

Thats how its meant to work. if you remember, those of us of a certain age, the summits between reagan and gorbachev, the enormous amount, the industrial quantities of preparations that were involved. this ought to be something close to that. the fact that the president himself is not prepared is, if you like, sort of the macabre cherry on top of a pretty crazy cake. >> peter baker, it also includes things like psychological profiles, like we can anticipatably predict here tonight that the north...

Doesnt read. and i know hes tweeting this morning, hes already had three tweets in the past 30 minutes. hes up around 5:00 a.m. and tweeted eight hours ago. hes tweeting at canada, tweeting at our allies, tweeting about tariffs. tweeting about obama, schumer and pelosi. back to preparation for these negotiations -- on denuclearization, and on one of the biggest foreign policy crises that we may face in our lifetime lifetime if were not careful, how important is it for the president to be prepare...

And staying up late for us in washington, our friend peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." bobby, you get to go first. what should prep for a summit with the north korean dictator look like? and set the stakes for us once the president arrives. >> well, this is not just a question of the president being prepared. a summit of this nature, two leaders who have not met, two countries that have not had direct discussions with each other, this should have been months ...