prosperity. second, the united states and north korea will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the korean pinsula. third, north korea commits to workd the complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula. and finally, the united states and the north commit to recoveringrisoners of war, missing in action remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified. president trump held a news conference just a short time ago and revealed what appears to be a major concession on the american side ending the u.s./south korea joint military exercises which he called war games. >> can you be specific about what assurances you are willing to give to kim jong-un? does that include reducing military capabilities and just to follow up on your answer -- >> no, we're not reducing anything. at some point i have to be host and i used to say this
during my campaign, as you know probably better than most, i want to get our soldiers out and bring our soldiers back home. we have right now 32,000 soldiers in south korea. and i would like to be able to bring them back home. but that's not part of the equation right now at some point i hope it will be, but not right now. we will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. but we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money. plus i think it's very provocative. >> welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, june 12th. we have all the historic, diplomatic, political and security angles of this moment covered for you this morning. former ambassadors wendy sherman, christopher hill and nick burns, will be our guests. we'll go live to our reporters in singapore and seoul. with us to kick things off along with willie, joe and me, the
president ofncil foreign rions and author of the book "a world in disarray" richard haass. former chief of staff at the cia and department of defense now an nbc news national security analyst, jeremy bash, senior adviser and korea chair at csis affairs analystr cha, columnist and associate editor for the "washington post" david ignatius and pulitzer prize winning historian and author of l of ameri theattle r our better angels" jon meacham. joe, let's try to put this moment into perspective. this is really, really big foreign policy news. it impacts the entire globe. how do you think the president did and how much can we believe, given the patterns we know? >> well, first of all, we can't believe anything the north koreans tell us.
you would hear that, whether you talked to people who worked in the obama administration or the bush administration or the clinton administration or if you spoke with president carter who ied his best to bring peace to this region. but every time the north koreans have lied, it's hard to take anything out of this. this was one meeting. this is one meeting. even dennis rodman was able to y over to singapore and get in front of cameras and talk about peace in the world. because there was really no prelude to this, no year-lon talks leading up to this, all we have is really we're just actually seeing spring training here instead of the world series. if you want to go back, let's go back and talk about what your father did 40 years ago this september. the camp david peace accords were worked through, sweated over, toiled over, and because of that, it gave us lasting
ground peace in the middle east for four decades. we don't know what's going to happen here. certainly i know everybody in america and across the world hopes that this ends up being successful, but richard haass, right now, there really is no way of judging this because it is a glorified photo op that may start the framework of something significant and as we say around here also, and as we've said, this is a heck of a lot better than what we expected to be happening in -- on the korean peninsula six months ago, which was war. >> yeah. the old churchhill line, we've had a couple hours of jaw jaw and the result is, is essentially aspirational. it's the loosest and thinnest of frameworks. if the devil is in the detail there's a lot of devil to be
side about. exactly what is to be done by whom and when. this is barely laid out. so as you said, if this were a game, this would be maybe the top of the first, joe. there's a lot of baseball to come here. i think the one to me concerning thing was the apples and oranges part of the president's position. north korea talked aspirationally about denuclearization, but the united states offered up something tangible which was the suspension of all military exercises and as best i can tell, those exercises, which are part of our conventional military deterrent, they were never meant to be a response to north korea's nuclear or missile force, i don't see anyone talking about much less doing something about the conventional military threat that north korea poses to south korea, the tens of thousands in artillery and the like. what this seems to be is ultimately very much a trumpen summit, emphasis on the istry and personal relationship, and yet again, a
desire to reduce the american footprint in the world. we >> david ignatius, they get headlines like the one of "the new york post" talking about historic summ but again, as richard said, the devil is in the details. nobody knows where this is going to go, inchose two men shaking hands right now. >> joe, it is a historic. it is i think to be fair a breakthrough, a breakthrough especially for kim jong-un. he has gotten what's been a north korean goal now for many decades, an american president to sit down, to grant what amounts to recognition of north korean aspirations. the weak part of the agreement that they have signed is that, as richard says, i the barest framework and the hardest questions that torpedoed past u.s. efforts to deal with the threatening north korean
weapons, namely the problem of verification, isn't addressed at all. we're going to have very difficult negotiations ahead, led on the u.s. side by mike pompeo, what had the sense of donald trump handing this over today, now tt he's done the cutting the ribbon at the supermarket, handing it over to mike pompeo. i would note one point that it seem that the u.s. is reserving continuation of sanctions against north korea until there are more concrete, specific promises on the denuclearization front. that's good to not let up the pressure in this first flush of handshakes and good comments. but i, again, even though something is symbolic, that doesn't mean it's not important and today is something important, did happen, and we have to recognize that and then be very clear about what needs to happen to flesh all the
details. >> and the goal, of course, through all that pomp and circance for the united states is for north korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons program. in the joint declarations it reads the d prk works to complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula. what's not in there is how or when that would happen. here's the president talking about that a short time ago. >> what timetable do you envision for their denuclearization and in the meantime are you thinking about easing any sanctions? >> you know, scientifically, i've been watching and reading a lot about this and it does take a long time to, you know, pull off complete denuclearization. it takes a long time. scientifically. you have to wait certain periods of time and a lot of things happen. but despite that, once you start the process, it means it's pretty much over. you can't use them. that's the good news. that's going to start very soon. i believe that's going to start very soon. we will do it as fasts it can mechanically and physically be
done, steve. >> and the sanctions? >> the sanctions will come off when we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor. sanctions played a big role. >> mr. president, the joint statement does not talk about verifiable or irreversible denuclearization. that is a concession on the part of the united states? >> not at all. use if you look at it, it said, we are going to -- let's see here, it will be gone. i don't think you can be any more plain than what we're asking issues related to the establishment of the new u.s./dprk. we talk about the guarantees and we talk about unwavering commitment to the complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula. this is the document that we just signed. >> did you discuss with chairman kim methods to verify, either with the united states or international organizations, that very process? >> yes, we did and will be
verified. >> yes. >> will be verified. >> how will that be achieved? >> it's going to be achieved by having a lot of people there, and as we develop a certain trust and we think we have done that, secretary pompeo has been really doing a fantastic job. his staff, everybody. as we do that we will have a lot of people there workiith them on a lot of other things but this is complete denuclearization of north korea. >> those people -- >> and it will be verified. >> will those people be americans or international? >> a combination of both. >> agency people? >> combinations of both. we have talked about it. >> so victor cha, it's clear that hasn't been discussed or worked out at all, the verification of this. that word does not appear in this joint declarations anywhere. working towards complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula is a worthy goal, but how reasonable is that from the north korean point of view? is he going to do that? is kim jong-un going to do that and how would we verify it? >> i mean, well the first thing you would do in verifying, you
want a complete and full declarations of all nuclear weapons, weapons precursors, facilities, and expertise that then could be verified, identified and located and verified by internatl atomic energy agency. these rts of specifics are missing from this document. you wonder like did we really need a summit to get this document? there's nothing on time frame. i had heard a lot about trying to get some sort of time frame. particularly the year 2020 into a document of this nature given the president's time in office, and clearly they were not able to get any of those things. there's a lot of specifics that are missing in this givenhe very high expectations, given the fact that we pulled out of the iran deal and we said we want something better than the iran deal. that was 110-page document. this doesn't measure up. >> big picture on this as someone who has worked on north korea as you have, what was your view of it? >> even seeing the two men walking out and the north korean and united states flags next to
each other? was this a good or bad thing from the united states' point of view? >> it was a historic thing. no sitting president has done this before. we need to talk to the north korean leader if we want to try to solve this problem because he's the only one that makes decisions. diplomacy is always about the relative, right, relatively speaking. if we weren't doing this we would probably be near an armed conflict. that's where we were headed in december of 2017. so in that sense, yes, this is a good first start in terms of the diplomacy, but there's still a very long way to go and if you look at the balance sheet, it seems like kim got a lot more out of this meeting than trump did. >> south korean military official telling nbc news they really want to look deeper at the president's comment regarding ending of the combined military drills. the war games comment. they want to understand the exact meaning or intense behind that. jeremy bash, let's look at the visuals here. because the ribbon cutting aspect of this in itself is
huge. it has not happened before i feel like the rest of this sits on the lap of mike pompeo and others to actually execute and the question is, can we back into it this way? is it possible? >> well, the imagery is hopeful. >> it is. >> some ways it's quite touching. i'm saying that tongue in cheek because -- >> it's that too. >> the president was gauzy in his praise of a despot and a dictator and i don't think any conversation about this should neglect the fact that kim jong-un is a murderer, a thug, starves his own people and putting him on the stage with the president, i don't care what anybody says, is a major concession and a gift to him. that said, dialog is better than military action. but i do agree that the agreement is entirely lopsided. it is the most vague, the most loose, the most unspecific with regards to the verification, the accounting and the inspection piece and the most specific, most concrete, most onerous on the united states with respect ending military exercises.
those military exercises serve multiple purposes, not only do they deter aggression by the north, but they serve other interests in the asiapathpacifi region. >> joe? >> richard, we know what the north koreans got out of this. they had a murderous despot share the state with the representative of the united states of america. they're getting the suspension of military exercises, which i'm sure our allies like the japanese may not be particularly pleased with. what did the united states get out of this? >> well, i think what this did is it stopped a drift towards war that we -- the conversation we were all having on this set three, four, five, six months ago, joe, that has been put in abeyance. that's one thing that's positive. to make it a sunny day, you would say it at least holds out the potential for addressing
some of the specific threats posed by north korea above all the nuclear missile threat, and there's nothing in here that interrupted the freeze on testing of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. so i would say that's essentially what we got. and the fact also that the united states, for some at least, that we seem to be embracing diplomacy. this is an administration that spent the last several days, not just kicking its allies, but seeming to reject the normal give and take of diplomacy. i don't want to exaggerate what i'm saying here, most of the upsides or potential for us, most of the upsides i think are much more immediate and tangible for north korea and also china. i would say this outcome to me looks like nothing so much as the proposal china floated when they talked about a freeze for eeze, suspension of north korean testing in exchange for suspension of u.s./south korean military exercises. i expect xi jinping is going not bad, chance of war down, weakens
the u.s./south korean alliance, raises questions for japan, sanctions will begin to loosen. it's a pretty good day in beijing. incredulous to hear the president, his take on how to work all this. they presented a video to the north koreans about all the wealth they could amass in the future and then the president said this -- >> they have great beaches. you see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean, right. i said, boy, wouldn't that make a great condo. i explained, instead of doing that, you could have the best hotels in the world right there. think of it from aeal estate perspective. you have south korea, you have china and they own the land in the middle. how bad is that, right? it's great. >> so i think, joe, might be time for some deep historic parallels and perspective on that comment and so many others. >> yeah. i think so.
jon meacham, this is just too easy. >> yeah. >> to -- know, we hear that history rhymes here. it is -- it's just the same words used verse one and verse two where i mean you can go from whether you're talking about what happened at the courthouse or talking about what happened in versaleuring the paris peace accords of 1919 or kissinger going to paris to end the vietnam war, they talked about beachfront condos. that's the great -- that's the great equalizer here between nations. it is -- that -- it is donald trump still, donald trump the real estate developer, and he doesn't realize that this dictator doesn't want beach condos. he wants nuclear weapons. and i don't think he has any plans to go the way of gadhafi.
>> yeah. remember, george cannon's great telegram how to lay out the hospitality industry throughout the soviet union. >> yeah. >> it's a -- richard actually keeps a copy of that on his desk, i thin >> yeah. >> two thoughts. just because something hasn't happened before, doesn't mean it's historic. that's one thing. i think when you call something historic it means it has a good chance of having lasting implications and i think it's very unclear, at least to my layman's eye, that this does that. i think richard is exactly right, if i were china right now, i would be thinking hey, i just had a pretty good week because these two other figures are making my life easier. the other question and this is negotiating with nation states that have some accountability within their body politic is a
different thing from negotiating with dictators. i think if we didn'trn anything else from the 1930s, i think we learned that happy summitry, emy words, potentially empty words and lots of flags and mony, don't necessarily lead to the consequences that we hope for. and so i think a dose of healthy, healthy skepticism here is important. this is the kind of thing that wouldap aong process, not begin one. perhaps this is the right way to do it. we'll see. but we're not dealing with, in north korea, a kind of regime where there are any checks and balances, whatever, inside. so we're dealing with a -- this may sound somewhat redundant, we're dealing with a figure who thinks of himself as autonomous, who worries somewhat about his
survival, but more or less wants to endure and have no accountability to his people. and i am talking about north korea there, just to be clear. >> all right. everyone stay with us. we have so much more to get to, including a pointed question to the president about his budding relationship with north korea's dictator, amid a decaying relationship with canada's leader, among other long-time american allies. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back.
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say he was nice or i don't say anything about it. very few people at that age -- you can take one out of 10,000 probably couldn't do it. >> you know, okay, president trump calling kim jong-un talented at last night's news conference. meanwhile, this is what he said about the g7 summit with u.s. >> i had a very good meeting with the g7. in fact, the picture with angela merkel, who i get along with very well, where i'm sitting there like this, that picture was we're waiting for the document because i wanted see the final document as changed by the changes that i requested. that was a friendly -- it didn't look friendly and it was reported like sort of nasty both ways. i was angry at her -- actually, we were just talking the whole group about something unrelated to everything, very friendly, waiting for the document to come back so i could read it before i leave. anyway, i left and it was very friendly. when i got on to the plane i think that justin probably didn't know air force 1 has
about 20 televisions and i see the television and he's giving a news conference abo how he will not be pushed around by the united states and i say, push him around? we just shook hands. cana does have very big advantages over us in terms of trade deficits. we have a big trade deficit with canada. i was reading where it's a surplus. it's not a surplus. it's either 17 but it could be 100. they put out a document, i don't know if you saw it, they didn't want me to see it, but we found it, perhaps they were trying to show the power they have, it's close to $100 billion a year loss with canada. >> um, so richard, i don't want facts to get in the way -- >> the thought -- >> terrible to point out to the president of the united states that actually his own government, on their own
websites, shows that the united states has a trade surplus with canada. the trump administration's own government websites show that point. that's one. number two, justin trudeau, again, any sane, any rationale, any mentally fit person that saw justin trudeau's press conference, would have come to the conclusion that it was actually about as mild and bland as any leader's press conference would be, so it still begs the question, why he's declaring war against justin trudeau and our democratically elected allies, while he still seems to have the softness for dictators from russia and turkey and china and north korea, and, richard, i was struck -- i'm sure mika was too -- that donald trump talking about how kim was a tough, effective leader at 26 and his
admiration for this murderous tyrant, reminded us of what he said about vladimir putin in december of 2015 when we were shocked at his admiration, calling putin at that time, i believe, also a very strong, very great, very effective leader. this is a man who since the day he was sworn in on january 20th, seems to have a soft spot for murderous dictators. >> he certainly has a lot more rapport with them than he does with democratically elected officials of allied countries. so, you know, one would then have to go into the modus of that. the pattern is clear whether it's putin, erdogan, xi jinping, duterte of the philippines, now kim jong-un. there's a pattern. if you contrast to the rapport there with theresa may, chancellor merkel, now justin trudeau, it's striking.
i also just say something about the trade relationship. you're absolutely right, we run a slight surplus with canada. the dairy issue that the president went so -- went on about is infinitesimal, one tenth of 1% ofu.s./canadian trade. by the way, if the united states had gone into tpp, the transpacific partnership which the psident yanked us out of, u.s. dairy exports, among other things, to canada would have increased. so it's -- so you have to think that he wanted to pick a fight with an ally and hep wanted to pick a fight over trade because these have been staples of his foreign policy if you go back to the inaugural address, back to the campaign, go back to the last few decades, the only two issues that donald trump has been consistent on is he doesn't much like alliances because he thinks our allies are free riders and doesn't like trade because he thinks we're getting taken advantage of. >> on the issue of the president being impressed by kim jong-un,
remind people he inherited his power from his father, a family dynasty of dictators, i would encourage people to read the 2014 u.n. report about what happens inside of north korea in terms of prison, torture, execution, all the things are laid out specifically there. there's a way to conduct diplomacy, is there not, try to get a deal to denuclearization the korean peninsula without cozying up that close to a man who's done the things he's done. >> they could have separated themselves -- i mean it was way too chummy. way too chummy. that u.n willie, led the u.n. security council eventually to recommend the north korean leader to the international criminal court for crimes against humanity. the lawyers have looked at this said, 11 out of 12 counts the north korean leader would be taken before the criminal court and thrown into the slammer. so this is -- i mean the notion that we cannot talk about human rights as we have this
conversation about nuclear weapons on north korea, to me is just something that doesn't make any sense because if this leadi reforming, he would have to treat his people better and we can't make an agreement with a country that treats its people the way it does, right, because the way you treat your people at home are the way you're going to people and partners abroad. >> there you go. >> it's difficult to separate these two. >> it's impossible. speaking of which, coming up, president trump suggests those held in north korean prison camps are, quote, great winners from the summit. that is next on "morning joe." "morning joe" is sponsored by --
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special young man. i have to say special parents, special people. otto did not die in vain. >> president trump in last night's news conference when asked about otto warmbier, the american college student released by north korea in a coma, only to die days later, of his severe injuries, in that news conference president trump was extensively asked about north korea's abysmal human rights record. >> what do you,resident trump, expect kim jong-un to do about the human rights record regarding the north korean people? >> right. it was discussed. it was discussed relatively briefly, compared to denuclearization. obviously that's where we started and where we ended. but they will be doing things. and i think he wants to do things. you would be very surprised, very smart, very go good negotiator. wants to do the right thing.
the case, having sat down with kim jong-un? >> right. >> to change that -- >> i believe it's a rough situation over there. there's no question about it. we did discuss it today. pretty strongl i mean knowing what the main purpose of what we were doing is. denuking. but discussed it at pretty good length. we will be doing something on it. it's rough. it's rough in a lot of places, by the way. >> i wonder what you would say to the group of people who have no ability whatsoever to hear or to see this press conference, the 100,000 north koreans kept in a network of gulags? >> i think they are one of the great winners today, that large grou you're talking about. i think ultimately they're going to be one of the great winners as a group. >> you know, jon meacham, we learned after the fall of the soviet union that when regan became president and started
talking constantly about the liberation of russians and people in eastern europe, and talked about peedom there were whispers whispers in gulags in the soviet about tapping on the walls about reagan the liberator. he brought hope to those who were imprisoned there with great moral authority and he helped to end the cold war. here, you have donald trump who has made it clear that, well, that human rights aren't going to be a part of any negotiations, and he even -- i thought it was tortured logic at best to say that the north koreans murder of otto warmbier was a time for reflection even for them. that's just not true at all. it's -- i personally think it's sick for him to suggest such a
thing about the most murderous regime, one of the most murderous regimes on the face of the earth. >> yeah. well complexity is not donald trump's friend, obviously, never has been and isn't here. suddenly that personal characteristic, his need to simplify everything, to make a deal out of it in which he is a protagonist and the person across the table is a co-star to some extent, is now intersecting with the life of nations. you're exactly right about president reagan. remember his said his psophy the cold we win/you lose, but that's the caricature. that was the union negotiator, the president of the screen actors guild who understood how to make a deal. he was deeply concerned about the human rights abuses and was someone who rejected the real
politic of ideas of day tant in the 1970s, the henry kissinger view.reagan d bring a moral pol. george herbert walker bush who is 94 today, did much the same thing as he managed the end of the cold war. so i think we -- we couldn't have to be sentimental to be humane. i think that's theallmar of a sound american foreign policy position on this. >> so jeremy, the president said there's a, quote, rough situation in north korea but he said it's rough in a lot of places too. i would point people to the 2014 u.n. report that victor was talking about that concludes there are many parallels between modern north korea and nazi germany, what was happening before the end of world war ii there. what are the dangers in your mind of talking this way? i mean we know that president trump understand flattery and he may be trying to afford some flattery to kim jong-un to get a deal he wants, but you don't have to go as far as he went last night?
>> it establishes a paradigm and in effect a trump doctrine. we are seeing the emerges of a trump doctrine here first on the human rights issue you referenced, if it's a rough situation we're not going to comment on it. any deal signed previously, a trade deal, iran deal, climate deal is per se bad. any deal this president signs is per se god. notwithstanding the substance. finally and i think most lastingly, the trump doctrine is now our global deployment of troops is needlessly provocative and costly and that has profound implications for american security and power. >> there are so many frustrating hypocrisies in terms of the treatment of the north korean leader, dr. cha, versus the canadi canadian prime minister, but put those aside, whatositives do you see that have come out of the past 24 hours? i think we can get tied up in knots about trump's way of speaking and a lot of people who are very pro-trump thinks that's the way he speaks and gets it done.
is there any logic to that? i mean i'm looking at some of the major disasters and world events, even domestic events, like puerto rico where he gave his word and nothing -- it's said, so i think we have some s real negative patterns in terms of his ability to follow through. but let's just take it for what it is in terms of what we've with seen over the past 24 hours. what are the positives? >> so, this is the first individual in the world to pierce the bubble of north korean leadership. >> right. >> that's something that's important. this is a move that i think for the most part is going to be supported by allies, the south koreans. japanese probably a little nervous. as richard said earlier, the chinese are happy with this, to the extent that we are trying to be a force for stability and peace in the region. this is better than where we were in december of 2017 when we were talking about armed conflict and potentially all-out
war. so in that sense i think it's positive. but the problem is, neither of these two leaders have a reputation for following through so, you know, there are supposed to be negotiations that pompeo will lead. they didn't name who would be the leader on the north korean side which is kind of urbing. and they are trying to implement these very broad principles where you can run a mack truck through these things. just by way of comparison the last agreement the north korean agreed to abandon all nuclear weapons, existing nuclear programs and return to the nonproliferation treaty at an early date. there was a time frame and abandoning nuclear weapons. here we have a broad statement about denuclearization of the korean peninsula, something the north koreans have been saying for decades. >> joe? >> yeah. you know, mi let m answer that for you. you know, we get paid on this show to try to predict how americans are going to respond politically to events and, of
course, when we predicted that -- when you predicted that barack obama was going toet elected in 2007 i was surprised. when we predicted that donald ump would win the republican primary, despite our reservations about him, a lot of people wereurprised. when we predicted that donald trump still had a shot three weeks out, a lot of people became very angry because there weren't too many people saying that. looking through the prism, what impact will this have on american voters, what's they're going to look at the front page of the paper today and they're going to say, good on him. this is a hell of a lot better than a nuclear -- >> i agree -- >> a hell of a lot better than a nuclear war and who knows, maybe shaking things up, maybe saying no to the experts, maybe raising hell on the world stage, maybe calling him little rocket man, maybe threatening him, got these two together.
so i think that it's -- first of all politically it is going to be positive for donald trump, but david ignatius, going to the second part of it, let's go back to when donald trump met with barack obama during the transition. obama said, this is what's going to keep you up. not obama care. this is the single greatest challenge you're going to face. six months ago, people high up in the administration were telling us that there was a 50 to 60% chan of a ground war on the korean peninsula, that there would be fighting, that american blood would be shed. i've got to admit, when i see these two people shaking hands, i feel a sense of relief, as do a lot o people in washington, knowing how bleak the situation was six months ago. what about you? >> i feel a similar sense of
relief that a process of diplomacy has started. i think it's really important to understand that today really was a beginning. the most important language i think in the document that they released is in the preamble where it says, the two sides are committed to confidence building measures that will eventually achieve complete deearization. so this has begun a process. it's one that's going to be a lot less tense than the confrontations we saw last year. the extent to which this is successful, depends really on careful analysis of each step and on trump being tougher towards kim jong-un than he's been in these last weeks. his comments today were so flattering. he's bought in so totally, almost as if kim jong-un is his protege, this talented young man, you know, so much that he's going to accomplish, and president trump has to back away
now to accept what will be, i think, some public applause for what he's managed to accomplish in this dramatic photo opportunity with kim jong-un, but now in the hard part, he's going to need advisers and public commentary that says what about verification. does it make sense to begin to unravel our defense relationship with south korea? what are the benefits for china? does that make sense? how should sanctions be removed? what's the specific process of verification? if those details can be worked out, i think we'll end up looking back on this as the beginning of a good process. if they're not, we'll look back, one more failure with north korea. >> one more failure starting in 1994, richard haass, where american presidentsave been lied to, one after another after another. i think we've all said it. this is the beginning. this is -- this is spring training. if this is going to be won, it's
going to be won in extra innings, much like the red sox last night did, richard beating your baltimore orioles. >> i knew you couldn't get through a morning without that, joe. >> in camden yards. but this is again, we all agree, this is better than the situation six months ago. but things can go bad very quickly if we don't do what ronald reagan instructed his negotiators to do, trust but verify. >> i don't argue your basic point. i would rather be sitting here talking about the pitfalls of diplomacy than odds of going to war. >> right. >> so let's grant that. one is obviously things don't work, that all -- 90% of life is implementation and history would suggest we ought to be skeptical about whether any of this will really happen, particularly denuclearization. the other thing, though, that troubles me and i've called it when i've written about this catastrophic success and the president hinted at it, we're willing to do too much and that
worries me about putting u.s. military exercises with south korea into the equation. no one is talking about reducing the north korean military threat. the president approaches all this, again, at our alliance it n that our alliance with south korea costs more than it benefits us even though we've had more than a half century of stability on the peninsula and south korea has become the 11th wealthiest country in the world so it makes me uneasy that he still looks at this through a prism that wouldn't be be better off if we could roll back the american alliance commitment to zk so that is a d-- south korea makes me uneasy. >> still to come on "morning joe" -- >> reporter: did you touch on the issue of peace treaty and where will you travel to pyongyang any time soon? >> well, at a certain time i will. that will be a day that i look very much forward to, at the appropriate time and i also will be inviting chairman kim at the
appropriate time to the white house. i think it's going to be something that will be very important and he has accepted. >> if the optics of the meeting with the president in singapore was a coup for north korea, what would a white house summit mean for the repressive regime? the next steps in this developing story straight ahead on "morning joe."
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germans are still grateful for, ormer research scientist from east germany named angela merkel. >> absolutely. and he understood that as he dealt with the fall of the soviet union that mikhail gorbachev had a domestic problem. he had a right wing that didn't want to see soviet greatness go away and if you doubt us, look at a young kgb officer named vladimir putin who in some ways is driven by that drama to reassert out of the defeat of the soviet union trying to undo to some extent what george h.w. bush did. >> jon meacham, thank you very much "soul of america." still ahead on "morning joe," former ambassadors wendy sherman, christopher hill and nick burns will be our guests at the top of the hour. plus we'll go live to richard edge until seou
engel in seoul. how that country is reacting to the president's big news that the u.s. will end joint military exercises with south korea. "morning joe" will be t back. behr presents: 2 stains, 4 seasons. ordinary stains say they can do the job, but behr premium stain can weather any weather. behr premium semi-transparent stain and sealer, overall #1 rated, weathers it all.
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regime. he has been very threatening beyond a normal statement ands i said they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of this which world had never seen before. >> i think without the rhetoric it wouldn't have happened. i think without other things going along, i think the establishment of a new team was very important. we ha great team think he wants to get it done, i feel that very strongly. >> from fire and fury to friends? right now president trump is in the air m 25-hour 10,000 mile journey back to washington, d.c. it has been a whirlwind few hours but the final results of the singapore summit will take longer to determine. welcome back to "morning jol wi
president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. columnist and associate editor for the "washington post," david ignatius, and joining the conversation, dean of the school of international studies at the university of denver, former u.s. ambassador to south korea and former assis secretary of state for east asia, christopher hill. former undersecretary of state for political affairs and former special adviser to president clinton and policy coordinator on north korea, wen n is witus. and former u.s. ambassador to nato, former state department spokesman, nicholas burns, professor of diplomacy and international relations at the harvard kennedy school of government. great group we have to look at just what happened over the past 24 hours, joe. >> and david ignatius i know off question for ambassador burns but i want to ask you top of the hour what your feeling is about
this statement which is a non-binding feel-good statement that allows these two leaders to conference but do you see anything beyond that that causes you concerns or suggest this is will be a success? >> joe, this is a beginning as we've been saying for the first hour of our convtion. it will take many months and many meetings to see if this process is real in the sense of achieving the complete denuclearization that was announced as the achievement of this opening round or commitment of this opening round. this is enormous triumph for kim jong-un, the north korean leader, he's built a nuclear force that has been his leverage talks. stared down president trump's remarks about fire and fury.
he kept going and he has i president trump someone who seems to have a real investment in kim jong-un ice success, working with him, so many flattering terms so what i'd like to ask our distinguished panelists, all of whom have been involved in deep diplomacy is to help us this about this process and maybe i could ask chris hill to start us off by thinking about what he sees as the biggest stumbling blocks ahead as we try to flesh out this very loose initial framework agreement. >> this is a very loose initial framework. it doesn't really advance the ball and frankly speaking i think the next step shower mike pompeo forgetting about this
stateme statement. chalking up this summit to feel good and getting an action plan. mike pompeo will be under the gun to lay out what it is we need to do. for example the statement says nothing at all about the regional powers, south korea, china japan, what's their role going to be? so a lot of questions like this and if i were mike pompeo i'd get moving on an action plan, how to bring this into negotiation because when you start lookit the statement, putting aside the syntax problems, you'll see it has major problems and is an invitation for the north koreans to do nothing in our lifetime. >> let me take the question to nick burns and wendy sherman.
nick, this is in part about our dealing with our allies, when we think about our european allies it's hard to remember a moment of more friction, how do you see the president and mike pompeo moving forward? >> let me say there was powerful symbolism in singapore. the president should get credit for having arrived at this day, turning away from war and turning towards diplomacy but the big question i've got, david, is does donald trump have the strategic patience to carry out a multiyear negotiation? he's not a famously patient person. it took ten years from the time that president bush started thinking about and negotiationing with iran to what wendy sherman and john kerry fulfilled ten years later. it took three years for the u.s./india negotiations and that was a friendly country.
two acts of congress to achieve a civil nuclear deal. this will take years and this statement is very general. it has goals and not a road map, now the questions are can mike pompeo be unleashed to be a tough-minded negotiator. can we keep south korea and japan with us? is china going to help or hurt? the allies have to be part of this, especially south korea, giving the existential stakes to its future. >> ambassador. the official, the president of the united states shaking hands with kim jong-un as victor cha said, being the first american to pierce the double. your reaction to that and the contents of what we saw in the joint declaration? >> i would agree that 's a good thing these two leaders
met. i was taken aback by the north korean flags and american flags de by side. we aren't side by side, we aren't equals to each other and this conferred power to kim jong-un that i don't believe he has yet earned in terms of the respect from the united states. that comes through building that relationship. as far as the agreement, i went back and looked at the previous agreements. the 1992 north/south agreement on joint declaration on denuclearization was specific -- no nukes, no facilities, inspections. the agreed framework done by bob g gallucci was very specific, close down the reactor until we get light water reactors, non-proliferation proof. what chris hill did was extraordinary. the verifiable denuclearization of the korean peninsula, verifiable in the september 2005 deal and it broke down over
verification so we have not only been here before but we have been here with greater specificity so pompeo needs to go back and understand a little bit more and history and go forward with a team that knows what they're doing. >> mike pompeo said they would take whatever they put together to the senate. any regre doing that with the iran deal? >> no regrets, the congress got to decide on the iran deal. there hadn't been a treaty agreed to except a on the know on start for years in the senate. when bob dole sat in his wheelchair on the floor of the united states senate to try to get the disabilities treaty through, who could be against that? it didn't happen. so treaties are difficult and the other thing, the iran deal
was 110 pages, a tre doesn't make it easy to look at reciprocal steps and pull back if necessary. it's a different kind of instrument so the congress got to decide on t iran deal. it was an interesting process and so i'm all for them having them take this as a treaty the senate but they'll fail if they do. so joe, jump in. >> richard haass, treaties are very difficult to pass through the united states senate but if a president wants something to survive his own presidency isn't that what is going to be required moving forward? because if donald trump makes a decision on his own with north korea, the next president is a democrat there are, of course, chances that that could be overturned, right? again, it's difficult.
it's supposed to be difficult but isn't that what is required? our allies, our friends and enemies know there will be consistency in our foreign policy regardless of who is sitting in the oval office? >> in principle i agree. it doesn't have to be in the form of a treaty, there's lower threshol thresholds, majority votes with executive agreements which are politically more realistic. i like the idea of hearings so the administration has to defend wh it's done. what we've had in singapore -- it would be the shortest meeting in history and that's the thing i agreed to. it ought to be present frommed if we get to that point but that would require mike pompeo and his colleagues do an enormous about of negotiations about time lines and verification and there's real issues about what
we are prepared to put up there. some people have criticized this for a lack of focus on human rights. that's legitimate but even more legitimate are the threats north korea poses outside nuclear. what about chemical? what about biological? what about artillery? what about special forces? . we can't have a narrow concern about nuclear weapons and that's about us and the south koreans and japanese have legitimate interests in other threats posed by north korea but i agree with your point, this is the real congress should be p y playing. they should be putting this under a microscope, right now they could hold hearings and talk about what should go into an agreement. rather than wait for one, they should have hearings and give
ideas to the administration about what they want to see in order for them to be prepared to approve it. >> ambassador hill, there seems washington that mike pompeo is very capable as secretary of state. i'm curious if you have confidence that secretary pompeo will be a good representative for the united states to have leading these talks, leading these negotiations? >> well, first of all, he has engaged the foreign service in a way that his predecessor did not so i think that's very good news. looking at the statement, i'm a little worried and i'd like to know how that happened but to me the most extraordinary news was another blow to allies.
the president announced to a press conference that what he called a war games, annual defensive exercises we have with south korea he considers provocative and he'll understand them. i understand the north koreans taking that position. i'm surprised at our own president taking that position. >> it's stunning. let's listen to the president taing about that. >> can you be specific about what assurances you're willing to give to kim jong-un? does that include reducing military capability ies? >> we're not reducing anything. at some point i have to be honest and i used to say this during my campaign as you probably know better than most. i want to bring our soldiers back home. we have 32,000 soldiers in south korea and i'd like to bring them back home but that's not part of the equation right now. at some point i hope it will be but not right now. we will stop the war games which will save us tremendous amount of money unless and until we see
the future negotiation isn't going along like it should but we'll save a tremendous amount of money. plus i think it's very outh korean military official tells nbc news regarding the u.s. president' comment regarding the ending of the combined military drill and so on, we need to find out the meaning or intention behind his comments at this point. >> can i say something to that? >> yeah. >> that's stunning that comment. that suggests this was not wired. the idea that the president would unilaterally go out there, portray this in terms of provocative and war games, surprise and ally whose existence depends upon the 28,500 american troops and the baing behind it, that is a stunning shock to an ally. >> so david ignatius, i'm thinking of so many -- thinking
so much about my father and i would rather you say what you think he would say given the fact that you moderated a book with him and brent scrowcroft about america's strategic relationship with the world and you collaborated with his thinking and yothink ing and ideas. >> mika, this is one of the days we wish your dad was here to share his own analysis which won more acute than anything we could come up with. zbig brzenzinski was clear about the way the world was changing, he talked about a global political awakening taking place and the need for the u.s. to see it. i think he'd make many points that have emerged in our conversation this morning.
you can't but but being encouraged by diplomacy as opposed to threats and risk of military confrontation but details are essential. dr. brezezinski focused on how you i agre he had the benefit of having a close relationship with jimmy cart carter. we'll see if mike pompeo has that relationship with donald trump. that will be crucial going forward. final point. dr. brzezinski saw the importance of allies and balance. he saw the trilateral relationship of europe, the united states, japan and asia as being the center of american security. that idea which i think is central to our security going forward seems to have been lost by this administon. it's the one thing i wish they could get their hands around again because zbig was right.
without that we would wobble when trying to d it alone. >> so president trump just gave an interview a few minutes ago. he was asked if north korea would get rid of all nuclear weapons, and he replied "he's denuking, he's denuking the entire place, i think he's going to start now. request tlts's no indication when he will start, certainly that he's not starting immediately. but what in here would compel kim jong-un to denuclearize. the stopping of warm games isn't enough so what would make the united states believe he would give up the one chip he has on the world stage. >> there's nothing in this statement that would compel them to do that except the president looking into his eyes and we've heard this before and seeing his soul andnowing that he would in fact carry through. the points that are being talked about in terms of our alliance are profound. probably the most important thing we could do is have pompeo be on an airplane not with the president of the united states
but going to south korea, japan, beijing, maybe moscow on his way home as well to have consultations because these negotiations and denuclearization will only happen if everyone is on the same page to make it happen, to ensure that it happens and the president may think he can do this bilaterally but he can't. >> what is the best case next step? the president wheels up on air force one coming back home. what needs to happen today? >> mike pompeo has to put together a negotiating team but you think about our greatest diplomatic achievement, german reunification, ending the balkan war, it ended with allies. so we have toet jap south korea involved. our allies strengthen us, president trump does not understand that and his
performance in quebec is going to hurt him in these negotiates. because he's drichk awven away european allies. it has to put doubt in the minds of kim andg will this american leader implement what he says? . that might be the greatest question. can we trust donald trump to have the patience to pull this off? >> and as richard pointed out, south korea not being wired into this process on a number of levels but the president is always riff iingedly these momes that are of such great import that riffing is the last thing you want to do. you want to prepare, know history, read, practice the psychology in the room. study the players, i think about the camp david peace accords and the 14 days where personalities
and different character traits of each player were taken into deep consideration as each player was trying to figure out how to work out some sort of commonality. we don't have that here and the over thing we don't have is regard for the human rights part of this which is swept away. we don't have regard for that and even deeper and more broadly we don't have a concept of where the united states should be in northeast asia. what will be our lowell this? you get the sense from the president he would like our role to be dim ininiinisdiminished. this isn't just about north korea, it's about the broader issue of what role the united states plays in a keyart of the world. if they can't figure this out, they won't figure out other parts of the world so reall our
whole standing is at stake here and we need to pay attention to all the aspects, including values of human rights. >> ambassadors wendy sherman, christopher hill, nicholas burns, thank you f being on the show this morning. thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," eugene robinson is standing by and you can be sure he has some thoughts on what plus, a live report from richard engel in south korea. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. if you are looking for a house,
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meeting and feeling like there had been a productive meeting and feeling like the president was wheels up to an important international summit the canadian prime minister took to the media to condemn president. so i think there was frustration expressed there. >> yeah. marc short chalking up peter navarro's "special place in hell" comment to frustration. so discourage to hear someone speaking that way. joining us now, pulitzer prize winning columnist and political analyst eugene robinson. he's ought with a column entitled "the compass gop credo was a sham all along" and he writes in part "trump has completely overturn what once was hallowed republican on fre trade. he has blithely ignored what used to be gop holy writ about fiscal restraint. he mocks the party's traditional
foreign policy stance enjoying better rapport with dictators than with democratically elected leaders that for decades have been our closest allies. if a democratic president acted this way, he or she would have already been impeached by the gop-controlled congress. outraged denunciation from the likes of senate majority leader mitch mcconnell would be loud and constant. but the party of abe lincoln, teddy roosevelt and ronald reagan is owned and operated by , a democrat by the way, and mcconnell is as meek as a mouse." gene, i don't know where to beg begin. you make a great point, i'm so so sad about the spinelessness and lack of leadership in the republican part yy. this is about our national security and they can't step up on one thing? >> it's astounding, on things that they have said that they have preached that i thought
they believed for decades. the whole philosophy about trade. the wh philosophy about fiscal restraint and yet a president comes in, he totally opposes a 19th century protectionist parade policy, he blows through any sort of concern, even the mildest concern, about deficits and long-term debt and in fact institutes the most lavish and irresponsible spending program that we've ever seen in this country and republicans are like, yeah, we down with that, that's cool. they just abandoned the whole thing. it's just shocking. >> and richard there's such a striking contrast to listen to president trump talk about meek and mild and weak justin true i do and hear him talk about kim
jong-un and say how impressed and tough he is. and at the core of this critique a falsehood, that we have a trade deficit with canada. and if you watch prime minister trudeau's remarks, it was nota s screed against the united states of america. >> if you didn't know anything about policy you'd think our friends and allies with the north koreans and the chinese and our enemies were the european europeans. this president comes into office and doesn't value american allies or alliances, he sees them as cost centers rather than profit centers in the language that he would be used to and he also is uncomfortable with the kind of give-and-take you have with democratically elected
officials. and the kinds of statements made by his aides, by peter navarro,, there should be no place in any administration for any staffer who speaks that way of the leader of a democratically elected- an ally. what you see are people defending that behavior. whe do we think canada will be the next time we ask something of them. where do we think trudeau will be when we say hey, we need your help on afghanistan. do we think he will be positioned to do that? where is the discipline in this administration? >> over the weekend on twitter general hayden and other military leaders tweeting that basically i never went to a war without having a canadian right at my side and this tradition goes back -- >> i don't think donald trump knows about that.
that's the problem. there's no knowledge of history and therefore no perspective on the value of our relationships. it's staggering everyday to realize how unself-aware and the lack ofknowledge. >> he has no idea why we have a global footprint. >> thencronies -- >> and his why we have a footprint in south korea and around the world. he doesn't understand u.s. foreign policat since the second world war the principles upon whi it has based. >> and you worry about the direction we are headed. we are a joke on the global stage and make no mistake, stupidity is dangerous. stupidity can be how it starts. here's president trump in last night's news conference with his
take on what happened at the g7 summit. >> i had a very good meeting with the g7. in fact, the picture with angela merkel who i get along with very well, that picture wase're waiting for the documeecause i wanted to see the final document as changed by the changes that i requested. i know it didn't look friendly and it was like reported nasty both ways, i was angry at her. we were just talking the whole group about something unrelated to everything. i left and it was friendly. en i got on to the plane. i think justin didn't know air force one has about 12020-televisions and i see the television and he's giving a news conference about how he won't be pushed around by the united states. i said push him around? we just shook hands. >> david ignatius? what do you make of that?
>> president trump's ability to see the world as he thinks it is always astonishes me. this jihad against prime minister trudeau in canada is senseless except in one way and it's sort of typical of trump. on his way to meet the north korean leader he wants to show how tough he is and the most significant person to kick is the host of the g7 summit. all you can take is he wanted a show of toughness. on the other question that gene robinson my colleague raises, why don't republicans speak out against behavior like this, against trashing our loyal and crucial ally to the north, canada? i think the answer is republicans are running scared. donald trump leads an insurgency and the primary target is the traditional republican part yy d
they have been blown away and they just stand there as trump attacks their values because they're afraid of him. i can't th any other reason they stay silent other than pure political fear. >> the other bizarre thing about the singapore summit is we have the right wing of the republican party cheering a process of negotiation with this last totalitarian communist dictatorship in a way that was unimaginable in the past if a democratic president had come out with this, the impeachment drums would be beating before the last sentence was set but in a way maybe that makes us shaffer in the short term. if they're going to talk and the
right wing is not going to sabotage it, maybe we're less likely to blund intera conflict e?th north korea. . richard haass, i was talking to a republican that i've known since i first came to congress in 1994 and he said it was surreal going around his district having people angry at him for talking about free trade, talking about the need to balance budgets, talking about the need to reform entitlement programs, about the need for having strong alliances with allies that have kept us where we are since 1945 and for getting on him for suggesting the president not lie about payoffs to porn stars, he said it is surreal, people are coming
up to me angry in my district because i'm saying the same exact things i have said for 25 years. that's where we are. and by the way, richard. if barack obama had said let's not worry about north korea's torturing of ohio college students and murdering of college students, they feel bad about it, they're gifted people, again, impeachment procedures would begin the next day. >> jimmy carter paid an enormous price for suggesting we would pull our troops out of south korea and this will probably not get criticized at all but what you're pointing is is discouraging because it suggests trpism will outlast donald trump and the republican party which used to believe in institutions, believed in free trade, believed in immigration, essentially the drivers of american wealth and the drivers of american strategic success,
that's no longer the case and why do we think it will return after donald trump departs from the scene? and if this represents a sea change in where the republican party and their voters are, that's discouraging in fundamental ways for the future of the world and this country's ability to play a constructive role. >> gene, stay with us. still ahead, south korea's president released a statement this morning calling the summit between president trump and kim jong-un "a great victory achieved by both the united states and the two koreas." we'll get the latest from nbc's richard engel live in seoul. next on "morning joe."
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foreign correspondent richard engel in seoul. richard, it appears south korea was surprised by what came out of the summit between president trump and kim jong-un. namely that the war games, to the president's term, the military exercises, would be suspended. did south korea know that was coming? >> it appears they did not or not everybody did. we reached out for a comment from the south korean military and the response we were given is we'll have to study these statements by president trump and drill down into what the intentions and meanings are. so clearly military officials we were speaking to didn't know this was coming and we're going through official channels which suggests that this came as a surprise, that they were
blindsided. that in itself is shocking. these military exercises are not a small matter in this country. there are roughly 30,000 u.s. troops here. every year they hold several military exercises with the south korean military. i've been told by u.s. commanders and south korean commanders that they are vital so the two militaries know how to work together. i was told theyo intention of cancelling them and then today president trump almost as an afterthought says, we're going to ccel them because it costs so much ney, flying in bombers from guam, it wiave a lot of money. and then moved on from there. >> richard, this is david ignatius in washington. you have to advantageover being on the scene and i want to ask ask you about the feel in seoul
in particular the question of the future of the korean peninsula, what people sense about the desire for re prospects of peace, the chance that we'll have with or without u.s. troops to safeguard the process, some pulling together of the two koreas other time. >> so president moon jae-in, the president of south korea, has been pushing for these negotiations, he's been the silent force behind this. he hosted the pyeongchang olympics, called them the peace olympi olympics. started this process of negotiations and he's delivered on that promise and he's enjoying enormous popularity in this -- on the streets here, behind me there's a political rally and moon jae-in's supporters are expected to do
very well because there is this peace initiative. six months ago people on the streets were protesting and calling president trump a warmonger. they thought at any moment because of the missile tests and rhetoric flying from president trump's tweets that perhaps there was going to be a real shooting war that could start o accident. now president moon cede we're going to have peace talks and those peace talks justhappened. now where do they go from here? there's a debate. they used to talk in this country that if they could have peace with north korea that the wall will come down, th dmz that separates north korea and south korea and they'll be one country. now they're talking more about a europe-still to confederation where you have two different governments but both closely
aligned in a you union but two separate political systems. that's far down the road if we ever get there but right now the peace camp is feeling confident. >> just building on that. imagine we have a scenario where talks don't go well, denuclearization is clearly not going to happen. as this south korean government so thrown in its lot with the peace campaign in if the united states says we have to keep sanctions in place oar ratchet them up that there will be such a problem for president moon that there will be a crisis in u.s./south korean relations? >> absolutely. . he's put all of his chips in the peace camp so if the peace derails he'll have to make a choice, either he sticks with the u.s. alliance and if the
peace process falls apart that could become a hostile force or he breaks and align mrs. closely with north korea and china and russia so if this those gadly president moon will have to change direction. >> that gives north korea leverage because they know south korean is unconditionally committed to a peace process. >> richard engel, thank you very much. still ahead, democratic coons joins the conference. we'll be right back. never thougd see one in real life. [ dinosaur screeches ] the park is in the past. run! we're not on an island anymore. there is a town five miles from here. am i dead? not yet, kid. change was inevitable
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a very worthy, very smart negotiator, absolutely and we had a terrific day and we learned a lot about each other and about our countries. >> reporter: what did you learn about him, sir. >> i learned he's a very talented man, that he loves his country very much. >> reporter: will you be meeting again sir? >> we'll meet many times. thank you very much, everybody. >> the man you met today, kim jong un as you know has killed family members, has starved his own people, is responsible for the death of otto warmbier, why are you so comfortable calling him very talented? >> well, he is very talented. anybody that takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it and run it tough, i don't say it was nice or i don't say anything about it, he ran it very few people at that age you can take one out of 10,000 probably couldn't do it.
>> getting a good picture, everybody, so we look nice and handsome and thin? >> beautiful. >> perfect. >> president trump praised kim jong un for his great personality. he said he would invite the dictator to the white house when the time was right and applauded north korea for its great beaches. we're going to break down all the biggest moments from president trump's summit with kim jong un. we have a packed 8:00 a.m. hour still ahead. we're back in three minutes. stol and packages. stol and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail they're handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget... that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you ♪
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>> reporter: what surprised you the most about chairman kim? >> great personality and very smart. good combination. >> reporter: is he a worthy negotiator? >> worthy negotiator. very worthy, very smart negotiator, absolutely and we had a terrific day and we learned a lot about each other and our countries. >> reporter: what did you learn about him sir? >> i learned he's a very talented man. i also learned that he loves his country very much. >> reporter: will you be meeting again, sir? >> we'll be meeting again. we'll meet many times. >> wow, something the world has never seen, the sitting president of the united states shaking hands with the leader of north korea. president trump and north koreans kim jong un met for about half a day yesterday and in the end signed an agreement with four points to it.
the united states and north korea commit to establish new relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity. second, the united states and north korea will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the korean peninsula. third, north korea commits to work toward the complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula and finally, the united states and the north commit to recovering prisoners of war, missing in action remains including the immte re-petriuation of those already identified. president trump held a news conference just a short time ago and refeeled what appears to be a major concession on the american side ending the u.s./south korea joint military exercises which he called war games. >> reporter: can you be specific about what assurances you are willing to give to krim jong un?
does that include reducing military kapz bl military capabilities? >> no, we're not reducing. i have to be honest as i said during my campaign, i want to bring our sold swrers back home. we have right now 32,000 soldiers in south korea an i'd like to be able to bring them back home but that's not part of the equation right now. at some point i hope it will be, but not right nouchlw. we will be stopping the war games which will save us a tremendous amount of money unlessnd until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. buzz we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money and i think it's very provocative. >> welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, june 12th. we have all the historic diplomatic, political and security angles of this moment covered for you this morning. with us to kick things off with
the president of the council on foreign relations and author of the book "a world in disarray," richard haas. former chief of s at the cia, jeremy bash, senior advisor and korea chair at csis victor chau. and pulitzer prize winning his torreon a to historian john meacham. let's put this moment into perspective. this is really, really big foreign policy news. it impacts the entire globe. how do you think the president did and how much can we believe given the patterns we know? >> well, first of all, with past his prologue we can't believe
anything the north koreans tell us. you hear that from people who worked in the obama administration or the bush administration or the clinton administration or if you spoke with president carter who tried his best to bring peace to this region but every time the north koreans have lied it's hard to take anything out of this. this was one meeting. this is one meeting. even dennis rodman was able to fly over to singapore and get in front of cameras and talk about peace in the world. and because there was really no prelude to this, because there were no year long peace talks leading up to this, all we have is really, we're just actually seeing spring training here instead of the world series. if you want to go back, let's go back and talk about what your father did 40 years ago this september. the camp david peace accords were -- were worked through, sweated over, toiled over, and because of that, gave us lasting
ground peace in the middle east for four decades. we don't know what's going to happen here, certainly i know everybody in america and across the world hopes that this ends up being successful but richard, right now there really is no way of judging this because it is a glorified photo op that may actually start the frame work of something significant and as we say around here also and as we've said, this is a heck of a lot better than what we expected to be happening on the korean peninsula six months ago, which was war. >> yeah, the old church hill line about jaw jaw being better than war war, we've had a couple of hours of jaw jaw and the result is essentially aspirational. it's the loosest and thinnest of frame works. if the deville is in the detail there's a lot of devil to be
decided about what is to be done by whom and when. this is barely laid out. so as you said, if this were a game this wo maybe the top he first, joe. there's a lot of baseball to come here. i think the one to me concerning thing was the apples and oranges part of the president's position that north korea talked aspirationally about denuclearization, but the united states offered up something tangible, which was the suspension of all military exercises and as best i can tell, those exercis which are part of our conventional military deterrent, they were never meant to be a response to north korea's nuclear or missile force. i don't see anyone talking about much less doing something about the conventional military threat that north korea poses to south korea, the tens thousands in or till rartillery and the like. tremendousmphasis on chemistry and on the personal relationship and yet again, a desire to
reduce the american footprint in the world. >> well, and i david , they get headlines talking about historic summit, but again, as richard said, the devil is in the details. nobody knows where this is going to go including those two men y know, joe, it is now. historic. i think it is to be fair, a break through. it's a break through especially for kim jong un. he has gotten what's been a north korean goal now for many to sit down, to draft what amounts to recognition of north korean aspirations. the weak part of the agreement that they have signed is that as richard says, it's the barest framework and the hardest questions that torpedoed past u.s. efforts to deal with the threatening north korean
weapons, namely the problem of verification isn't addressed at all. we're going to have very difficult negotiations ahead, led on the u.s. side by mike pompeo who would have the sense of donald trump handing this over today now that he's done the -- cutting the ribbon at the supermarket handing it over to mike pompeo. i would note one point that it seems that the u.s. is reserving contin o sanctions against north korea until more concrete specific problems on the denuclearization front. that's good to -- not to let up the pressure in this first flush of hand shakes and good comments. but i, again, even though something is symbolic, that doesn't mean it's not important and today is something important did happen and i think that we ought to recognize that and then be very clear about what needs to be -- to happen to flesh out
all the details. >> and the goal of course through all that pomp and circumstance for the united states is for north korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons. what's not in there is how or when that would happen. re's the president talking about that a short time ago. >> reporter: what timetable do you envis for the denuclearization and in the meantime are you thinking of easing any sanctions. >> scientifically i've been watching and reading a lot about this and it does take long time to, you know, pull off complete denuclearization. it takes a long time scientifically, you have to wait certain periods of time and a lot of things happen, but despite that, once you start the process, it means it's pretty much over. you can't use them. that's the good news and that's going to start very soon. i believe that's going to start very soon. we will do it as fast as its can be mechanically and physically be done, steve.
>> and the sanctions? >> the sanctions will come off when we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor. sanctions played a big role. >> mr. president, this joint statement does not talk about verifiable or irreversible denuclearization. is that a concession on the part of the united states? >> no, not at all. it said we are going to -- let's see here, it will be done. i don't think you can be any more plain than what we're asking, the issues related to the establish at of the new u.s. dtk, we talked about the building and we talked about guarantees and unwaivering commitment to complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula. this is the document we just signed. >> reporter: did you discuss with chairman kim methods to verify with the united states or international organizations that very process. >> yes, we did and we'll be
verifying. yeah, we'll be verifying. >> reporter: how will that be achieved, mr. president? >> it's going to be achieved by having a lot ofeople there and as we develop a certain trust and we think we have done that. secretary pompeo i has been ing a fantastic job, his staff, everybody. as we do that we're going to have a lot of people there and 'll be working with them on a lot of other things but this is complete denuclearization of north korea. and it will be verified. >> reporter: will those people be americans or international -- >> combinations of both. and we have talked about it. >> so victor, it's clear that hasn't been discussed or worked out at all the verification part of this and that word verify does not appear in this joint declaration anywhere. working toward complete denuclearization of the korean peninsula is a worthy goal, but how reasonable is that from the north korean point of view? is he going to do that? is kim jong un going to do that and if so how would you verify
it? >> you'd want a complete and full declaration of weapons, precursors, facilities and expertise that could be identified and located and verified by the international acomic agency. these sorts of specifics are completely missing from this document. you kind of wonder did we really need a summit to get this document? there's nothing on timetimefram. i'd heard a lot about rye thing to get some kind of timeframe. even 2020 into a document of this nature and clearly they were not able to get any of those things so there are a lot of specifics that are plimissin given the fact we pulled out of the iran deal. that was 110-page document. this doesn't really measure up. >> big picture on this is someone that's worked on north korea as you have. what was your view of it even seeing the two men walk out with the two flags next to each
other? was this a good thing or bad thing? >> clearly his foric thin-- hisc thing. you know, diplomacy is always about the relative. relatively speaking if we weren't doing this we would probably be near an armed conflict. that's certainly where we were headed in december of 2017. so in that sense, yes, this is a good start in terms of diplomacy but there's still a very long way to go and if you look at the balance sheet it looks like kim got a lot out of this meeting than trump did. >> still ahead, is kim jong un ready to exchange nuclear weapons for beach side condos? president trump made a sales pitch and we'll play it for you, next on "morning joe." it took guts to start my business. but as it grew bigger and bigger, it took a whole lot more. that's why i switched to the spark cash card
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they presented a video to the north koreans about all the wealth they could amass in the future and then the president said this. >> they have great beaches. you see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean. wouldn't that make a great condo behind and i explain, instead of doing that you could have the best hotels in world right there. think of it from a real estate perspective. south korea, china and they own thnd in the middle. how bad is that, right? it's great. >> so i think, joe, it might be time for some deep historic parallels and perspective on that comment and so many others. >> yeah, i think so. john meacham, this is just too easy to -- we hear that history rhymes here. it's just the same words used in verse one and verse two where i mean, you can go from whether
you're talking about what happened at the courthouse or you're talking about what happened in versailles during paris peace accords of 1919 or kissinger going to paris to end the vietnam war, they all talked about beach front condos. that's the great equalizer here between nations. it is -- it is donald trump still donald trump the real estate developer, and he doesn't realize that this dictator doesn't want beach condos. he -- he wants nuclear weapons and i don't think he has any plans to go the way of gaddafi. >> remember how to lay out the hospitality industry. it's a key. richard actually keeps a copy of that on his desk, i think. >> two thoughts.
just because something hasn't happened before doesn't mean it's historic. that's one thing. i think when you call something historic it means that it has a good chance of having lasting implications, and i think it's very unclear at least to my layman's eye that this does that. i think richard's exactly right. if i were china right now i'd be thinking hey, i had a pretty good week because these two other figures are making my life easier. the other question and this is a direct historical point is negotiating with nation states that have some accility within their body politic is a different thing from negotiating with dictators. and i think if -- if we didn't learn anything else from the 1930s, i think we learned that happy summitry, emptywords, potentially empty words and lots of flags and lots of ceremony
don't necessarily lead to the consequences that we hope for. and so i think a dose of healthy healthy skepticism here is important. this is the kind of thing that would ordinarily cap a long process not begin one. perhaps this is the right way to do it. we'll see. but we're not dealing with -- in north korea a kind of regime where there are any checks and balances, whatever, inside. so we're dealing with a -- and this may sound somewhat redundant. we're dealing with a figure who thinks of himself as autonomous, who worries somewhat about his survival, but more or less wants to endure and have no accountability to his people. and i am talking about north korea there, just to be clear. >> coming up on "morning joe,"
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>> reporter: the man you met today kim jong un as you know has killed family members, has starved his own people, is responsible for the death of otto warmbier. why are you so confident calling him very talented? >> he is very talented. anybody that's able to take over a country at 26 years of age and run it and run it tuough, i dont say it was nice, very few people that age, one out of 10,000 probably couldn't do it. >> you know, okay. president trump calling kim jong un talented at last night's news conference. meanwhile this is what he said about the g7 summit with u.s. allies. >> i had a very good meeting with the g7. in fact, the picture with angela merkel who i get along with very well where i'm sitting there
like this, that picture is we're waiting for the document because i wanted to see the final document as changed by the changes that i requested. it was very friendly. i know it doesn look friendly and i'm sure it was reported nasty both ways. i was angry at her. actually we were just talking, the whole group unrelated to anything. very friendly waiting for the document to come back so i could read it anyway. when i got on to the plane i think that justin probably didn't know that air force one has about 20 televisions and i see the television and he's giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the united states and i say push him around? we just shook hands. canada does have very big advantages over us in terms of trade deficits. we have a big trade deficit with canada. i was reading oh it's a surplus, it's not a surplus, it's either 17 or it could be 100.
they put out a document, i don't know if you saw it, they didn't want me to see it but we found it. perhaps they were trying to show the power they have. it's close to a $100 billion a year loss with canada. >> so richard, i don't want facts to get in the way. it would be -- >> perish the thought. >> -- terrible to point out to the president of the united states that actually his own government on their own websites shows that the united states has a trade surplus with canada. the trump administration's own government websites show that point. that's one. number two, justin trudeau, again, any sane, any rational mentally fit person who saw justin trudeau's press conference would have come to the conclusion that it was actually about as mild and bland as any leader's press conference
would be, so it still begs the question why he's declaring war against justin trudeau and our democratically elected allies while he's still seems to have a softness for dictators from russia and turkey and china and nort and richard, we -- i was struck, i'm sure mika was too, that donald trump talking about how kim was a tough effective leader at 26 and his admiration for this murderous tyrant reminded us of what he said about vladimir putin in december of 2015 when we were shocked at his admiration calling putin at that time i believe also a very strong, very great, very effective leader. this is a manho since the day he was sworn in on january 20th seems to have a soft spot for
murderous dictators. >> he certainly has a lot more rapport with them than he does with democratically elegislated officials of allied countries. so you know, one would have to then go into the motives of that, but the pattern is clear whether it's putin, ping, now kim jong un, there's a pattern here and if you contrast the rapport there with teresa may, chancellor americamerkel and non trude trudeau. we run a slight surplus with the thy issue is like one tenth of 1% of u.s. canadian trade and by the way, joe, if the united states had stayed -- add gone into the transpacific partnership which the president yanked us out of u.s. dairy exports would have increased.
so you have to think that he wanted to pick a fight with an ally and he wanted to pick a fight over trade because these have been staples of his foreign policy. if you go back to the campaign, you go back the last few decades the only two issues that donald trump has been consistent on is much like alliances because he thinks our allies are free riders and he doesn't much like trade because he thinks we're getting taken advantage of. >> coming up on "morning joe," from the senate foreign relations committee chris coons isnd staing by. we'll get his reaction to the events that are playing out in real time onhe world stage. we'll be right back. hey allergy muddlers.
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will stop that and i think it's very provocative especially since we're getting along. >> joining us now nbc news pentagon correspondent, what is the pentagon saying about the outcome of this summit? how are they balancing it? >> well, officially they're saying they're working with the interagency process and partners and allies to make sure everyone is on the same page. cly the pentagon need to get back in line withresident because the president is just c contradicted years of pentagon statements. take a listen when he talks about these being provocative. the routine military exercises are defensive in nature. when president trump says they're provocative he's basically taking kim jong unlin line and on this idea of training exercises being expensive, if you don't train you wind up having accidents.
this week will be the one year anniversary and all the training over the last 12 months officials here will tell you because that's a lack of funding and a lack of training and readiness. for the president to contradict that, that's remarkable and the idea of removing u.s. troops, just yesterday defense secrery mattis was talking to us saying it was premature to talk about any troop removal. i suspect secretary mattis and president trump will have a big phone call today and get on the same page. >> that would be good. thank you very much. and joining us now, member of the foreign relations committee, democratic senator chris coons of delaware. senator, given the outcome of this meeting, the symbolism but also some of the words that the president used that seemed to catch many offguard, how do we cobble something together productive about this? >> that's what i hope will happen. we all have to hope and pray for
our president trump's success and progress towards peace. i far prefer the photo o in singapore than six months ago when they were hurling insults at each other and terrifying the tire world that we might prompt my go to conflict. so we prefer this. but frankly, north korea, china, russia, they had a great week. this was a dream outcome for kim jong un, something his father and grandfather legitimacy on the world stage, an invitation to the white house, no concessions on human rights, and no clear concessions on a time line or a process for denuclearization. so president has secured only whwo presidents before him, one republican, one democrat denuclearizati, but gave up i think a lot of our prestige and leadership. how do we resurrect something from this? well, first the trump administration doesn't yet have an assistant secretary of state,
an ambassador to north korea. this is when the failure to put in place key advisors may become a challenge because secretary of state pompeo is promptly going to be negotiating with north korea under this agreement exactly how denuclearization might happen and figuring that out, figuring out the details, the time line of verification without having sanctions against north korea fall apart is a huge challenge. >> it's good to see you this morning. the president has said several times now over the last three hours after his summit broke up that he trusts kim jong un, that he shaped him up, he sort of likes him. he's a sort of rough guy but he loves his country, said he was intelligent, basically that he trusts kim jong un. should he? >> absolutely not. kim jong un is one of the world's worst human rights violato violators. later today i'm meeting with a group of north korean defectors and i'll remand you back at the state of the union president
trump made it clear that he understood by highlighting the case of a north korean defector and a young american who was brutalized in north korea, just how dangerous a regime this is. what's happened in the last 24 hours that has allowed president trump to look in his soul and conclude that kim jong un is talented, capable and trustworthy? i don't know. we should instead be looking at his actual record on the ground. this reflects something that goes back to trump as candidate where he makes complimentary statements about dictators like putin and in this case kim, yet picks fights as he just did at the g7 is our longest, oldest, closest allies like canada, germany and the uk. i think president trump would have been stronger going into this summit had he left the g7 in canada with a united declaration of support for sanctions and for our negotiating stature. instead he left with the g7 in
disarray. >> your committee, the senate of foreign relations committee and you played a crucial role in overseeing the iran nuclear negotiations and finally looking at the agreement. i want to ask you two things. what can you do in the senate to try to help this process and keep it from -- from falling apart, keep the standar seco, if you would compare and contrast what happened today with the iran nuclear agreement that secretary kerry reached. >> here's the most important development i think this morning. china is already calling for the u.n. security council so lighten sanctions on north korea. that is a very concerning development. last week president trump his commerce department had zte, a key chinese tell com company over a barrel and let them up without getting key concessions,
in particular a close partnership on confronting north korea on the nuclear weapons program. the obama administration spent years building a multilateral worldwide consensus to continue sanctions against iran. some criticized the obama administration for not using that leverage enough. i commend them what are that was a very difficult effort. myern concern is that the trump administration really hasn't done their homework in terms of getting our key allies and most importantly one of our potential adversaries here, china, to the people and enforcing sanctions on north korea. it's sanctions that got them to the tab and it is continuing tough sanctions that will keep them from walking away. the foreign relations committee has a key role in making sure we've got new nominees. we don't have a nominee who is confirmable for the east asian assistant secretary.
we are really going to need seasoned diplomats to hammer out the details and the senate on a bipartisan basis needs to support what progress there may be but it took years to work out the iran nuclear verification regime, which was tough and searching and thorough. for this agreement with north korea to mean anything, for it to be more than a reality tv hand shake summit there's going to need to be a lot of hard work in the months ahead and i'm concerned that the trump administration isn't prepared to do that hard work. >> and briefly follow up. would you encourage the committee to enact some measure saying that sanctions should not be lifted on north korea until it meets certain conditions? >> absolutely. i think that would be an important, strong show of bipartisan support. we could combine it with embracing this diplomatic opening, with providing some encouragement and support. we also have legislation that i'm behind that i'm cosponsoring that continues our pressure on north korea for its human rights
violations. i'll remand you there's 100,000 north koreans kufring today. we can't ignore that. this is a dangerous regime and the senate has an important role here in supporting diplomacy but also holding this administration accountable. >> thank you very much for bei on the show. let's bring in former und undersecretary of state and former dod official and executive director. now a senior fellow at the atlantic council and an nbc security analyst. joe, you want to start things off? >> that sounds good. rick, let me follow u on what senator coons said and ask you a question based onis insights. is it possible to have a deal with north korea of any significance that could lead to a complete and total denuclearization with a state department as gutted as our
state department currently is? >> well, i don't know the answer to that, joe. it's obviously not a good thing thathe state department doesn't have the support, but what you have in terms of this deal is you have two guys that are famous for welshing on their debts. two guys who overpromise and underdeliver and what you have is this, you know, 200 word statement that doesn't commit anybody to anything. i think the phrase is north korea commits to work towards complete denuclearization. as senator coons said for the iran deal, the actual frame work agreement was hundreds of pages long that committed to a veryre. there's nothing like that here. in fact what we have here was the beginning of something, not the end of something and this was the beginning where other presidents started their negotiations and then it ended. again, as victor said, we had more than this for the six
priority talks and more than that in 1994. >> and evelyn, again, continuing asking about the statement state department and its ability to bring together a deal for the president to sign ultimately at the end of a very long negotiating process, mike pompeo has been receiving high marks from many people in the foreign policy community, but mike pompeo can't do this alone. again, you look at the und undersecretaries that aren't there that would be helping out as he moves forward in this process. we still don't have an ambassador to south korea. the list goes on and on and on. the secretary of state cannot do this by himself. >> right. you're absolutely right, joe, and you know, there was a small group of experts working behind the scenes and we don't see any idence of the work that they did in this document. i'm hopeful maybe there's a timetable. maybe some principles they laid out and tried to get their
counter parts from north korea to agree to but there's another problem on the north korea side. i don't know if you know this but the north koreansailed to identify their negotiator on the other side of the table. for our side we said it would be secretary pompeo. the north koreans didn't say who theirs would be. so leaving that blank in essence means that, you know, from day one a point of negotiation with them. so that's disconcerting and it also affects the time line because if you remember, the document says that almost immediately they're going to repatriot pow/mia. that is another issue i know about and discussed with the north koreans and you have to verify. they will tell you they're here, there and everywhere, you need to do testing on that. so there are a lot of open questions here. i also want to say about the troops, many people don't know this. it's actually cheaper to keep
u.s. forces in korea than stationed in the united states. why? because our allies pay 50% of the cost of the troops staying on the peninsula. there's a big deterrent factor for the region, not just the peninsula. >> you mentioned it, ron, so let me throw out a premise for you to discuss. number one, this is not even a hint of a shadow of the iran agreement that president trump so disagreed with. verify my removed the ointent for a bomb or, clearly out of the country. concrete things like that, nothing like that in this
agreement. i don't know if the president will continue to say this a better deal than iran but clearly it's not a deal at all compared to iran. the second point, still, it's a good thing that we're talking rather than yelling about fire and fury in a way that could lead to unintended disaster. >> you know, i'm about to give a terrible secret now. diplomacy is boring. it's very dull. it's a negotiation of terms. here's what we mean about it. you want to do 3% enrichment? that's too high. it should be 2.9%. you had a nuclear physicist who was in on those negiations so you have nothing here of any kind of detail, just a kind of commitment to discuss it and i agree with you. that is a good thing.
i'm glad that they've committed to discuss these things but trust but verify as ronald reagan said and there's no ameri mechanism. >> another president delivered an iconic line exactly 31 years ago today. guess what it s.hreees to "morning joe" "morning joe" is coming right back. with my bladder leakage, the products i've tried just didn't fit right. they were very saggy. it's getting in the way of our camping trips. but with new sizes, depend fit-flex is made for me.
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>> i may be wrong. i may stand before you in six months and sa hey, i was wrong, i don't know that i'll ever admit that, but i'll find some kind of an excuse. >> wow. that kind of really -- that kind of -- kind of crystalizes dramatic contrast. those two moments come exactly 31 years a part to the day. president reagan, west berlin, back in 1987, and president trump in singapore today. >> see, i thought you would have gone with full contrast. for tear down the wall, kim jong-un, erect those beach condos. >> i really tried to be right down the middle all day today. >> you've done very well, mika. i commend you for it. and, you know, you had ronald reagan who spoke out against the evil empire plight, members of
washington's elite were offended that he would say that about a country that probably killed 30 million to 40 million of its own people from its start in 1917. from a regime. but you know, rick stengel, one of the great differences -- we keep talking about how this is sort of a reality show. not a shotgun marriage but a shotgun summit. which we all hope ends up being successful. though the contrast couldn't be greater between reagan and trump. ronald reagan, it was joked, gave the same speech for 40 years. when he got on airplanes, martin anderson described how reagan constantly carried around legal pads with him. didn't talk to people in airplanes. they hunched in the corner and was constantly writing out his agenda, his ideology, his beliefs, his values, his views.
so reagan gets to that point on the wall and says, mr. gorbachev, tear down that wall. it wasn't something that he thought about that day or that week or that month. it wasn't for a quick headline. it was to, in the words of bobby kennedy, bend history. and bend history ronald reagan did, because he prepared for that moment for 40 years. i'll let you contrast what we saw yesterday and today in singapore. >> tear down this wall. beautiful four words that encapsulate, as you say, a lifetime of study and preparation and belief about what he thought the world was like. i mean, to use a new york real estate expression, you know, people say don't talk past the sale. i mean, donald trump talked past the sale, right? he just added all of these things to it.
if he said let's see what happens. this is a start. that would have been ten times better than what he did with when we were watching before maybe i'll have to correct myself, maybe it will be different six months from now. it's about precision of language. ronaldeaganad preci of language. >> exactly. >> that was very, very clear. >> so david ignatius, in our last few minutes here, to put a fine ignatius point on what we've been talk iing about for three hours. most people around the table and i think president trump even agrees this is just the framework. what could happen from here that would be productive? >> you need, now, to move into a very careful deliberate process, driven by experts where you get the list of north korean sites, facilities, exactly where they are on both the nuclear and missile fronts. you need working groups that begin to flush out the details.
you need to draw on the iaea to inspect, to begin the process of verification. you need all the detail work that i think mike pompeo understands. but he's going to need his president's support. i just say in conclusion, willie, to be cynical, this is the deal that john bolton was most afraid of. i mean, john bolton has been worried since the '90s that we've made a deal like this. and president trump has just done that. i wonder what john bolton is thinking today. what we saw today is how badly donald trump wanted this moment. you know, he didn't get the communique that we thought he would, that had more specificity and he took it anyway. now he's got to do the hard work. or somebody has to do it for him. >> there's a lot of day trading going on to get the pr moment, the ribbon cutting. but i wonder what is lost, gene
robinson, that's a great phrase, precision of language, when you put a whole bunch of stuff forward that you have to pull back on. this is the risk one takes when donald trump is alone at the table. because he can't even follow the advice "do not congratulate" in bold letters in front of him. so here we have him throwing out all sorts of things that now we're going to take back. >> i think we probably shouldn't be surprised at this point. that's who donald trump is. that's the way he operates. you know, maybe in the way that ronald reagan could distill those many, many years of study hought into tear down this wall mr. gorbachev, you know, donald trump's version of that may well be those beach front condos, right, may well be the way he thinks of a future for north korea. but the perspective that i think we can't lose here is that for the first time a president of
the united states sat down face-to-face -- >> a sitting president. >> a sitting president of the united states sat down face-to-face with the sting president of north korea. that changes things. >> yes. >> we don't fully know how, but it changes things. very significant. and, one hopes, a lowering of tensions. >> i think it's important. i agree 100%. we have to give the president credit. this is diplomacy, rather than making war and saber rattling. but the devil is in the details. >> all right. joe. >> no details though. >> joe, jump in. >> i just want to bring up a good friend of ours, a good friend of -- well, anybody that knows him feels just naturally like they're a good friend of larry kudlow's. larry had a heart attack last night according to the president. he's resting. and he's doing well. but, davidlarry's been in washington a long time. he's got his toughest assignment
yet. he's doing as good of a job i think as anybody could do in that assignment. >> joe, i just lost the sound, if you're hearing me -- >> all right, david's not able to hear. i will say, joe, just to that point, you really saw him trying to strike a balance in ington. trying to answer questions honestly. especially when he's right at the sort of belly of the beast with this sort of oath that most people have to take with president trump. larry kudlow's tried to draw a fine line. it has been clearly a very, very tough job. we hear he's going to be just fine. and that he will recover fully. and we are so, so grateful for that. so we'll end there today. what a momentum day though in terms of international affairs. we can onl hope for best at this point. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. >> thank you, mika. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today.
♪ ♪ ♪♪ voltaren. the joy of movement. ♪♪ >> pima county sheriff's detective jennifer garcia was suspicious of nick's ex's ex, justin skinner. he seemed to have both opportunity and motive to kill nick. so when justin didn't want to give a dna sample -- >> i thought that he -- he might be the guy. >> but then after a little persuasion -- >> yeah, that's fine. collect dna. let's do it. >> his cooperation plus statements from people at the bar and claudia were enough for detective garcia. >> we were able to rule him out pretty quickly as a suspect.
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him only got stronger. his dna was found all over nick's bedroom, and nick's blood was on the pants recovered at the lapan home. with the overwhelming dna evidence plus serena's testimony and the firearms analysis evidence, jurors didn't need much time to reach a verdict. >> we, the jury, do find the defendant james lapan guilty of the offense first-degree murder. >> you're not required to offer a motive, but what do you think the motive was here? >> obsession and hatred. that's all tied up around nick and jessica. >> jessica stillwell, james lapan's mistress and nick's former girlfriend. prosecutor mosher called her as a witness, but his interest in her was not so much about what she said as what she might have done. >> i can't prove that she had involvement, but i can't rule it out either. we have these texts from the evening of the murder that are really pretty disturbing. >> reporter: at 6:36 p. m., james lapan sent this text to jessica. pitbull. to which jessica replied, his dog. his name is smokey. and then james instructed jessica to delete all their texts. >> why are you talking about nick's pit bull the night he's murdered? >> jessica testified she and james had talked about her getting a dog like smokey for her daughter. that said, investigators still wonder if jessica was feeding james information about nick. remember, after the murder,
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you the stories of murder victims who lit up the room or who didn't have an enemy in the world. well, not so much with nick morelos. he definitely knew how to light up a room, but depending on which room it was, there might have been people in it who actively wished him ill. that was true in his personal life, and it was true here at work. the question for investigators, which side of nick's life had caught up with him? detective garcia quickly began to find out how much nick's leatherneck exterior had rubbed people the wrong way. jeff johnson was h. r. director at marana aerospace. >> i did have some exit interviews that people complained of how nick talked to them. >> except the way nick talked to them was kind of what nick was being paid for. >> correct. >> which was, let's go. >> get the job done and get it done on time and on budget. >> he was brought in to sort of
him only got stronger. his dna was found all over nick's bedroom, and nick's blood was on the pants recovered at the lapan home. with the overwhelming dna evidence plus serena's testimony and the firearms analysis evidence, jurors didn't need much time to reach a verdict. >> we, the jury, do find the defendant james lapan guilty of the offense first-degree murder. >> you're not required to offer a motive, but what do you think the motive was here? >> obsession and hatred. that's all tied up around nick and jessica. >> jessica stillwell, james lapan's mistress and nick's former girlfriend. prosecutor mosher called her as a witness, but his interest in her was not so much about what she said as what she might have done. >> i can't prove that she had involvement, but i can't rule it out either. we have these
said i can't be 100% certain, he said, the guy had a hat and sunglasses i wish he took it out, and he pointed at the picture of david and said, i'm 90% sure that's the person i sold the gun to. >> what happened when he looked at the picture involving andy? >> when i showed him the photo liner with andy, he looked at it and he immediately looked at it and pointed at andy and said that is very odd, this is strange. he was confused. he goes, that looks like the idea, that looks like the person i sold the gun to. he picked up both of them. so, we still had more questions. >> it was all very confusing. didn't help that david and andy looked similar. so, one last thing to try. earlier when deputies search david's house they found the bill of sale for that gone, but they also discovered a receipt for lemonade and a candy bar