White house advisors including defense secretary james mattis apparently talked trump out of ending the exercises in the summer of 2017 but then in fact when trump went and met kim jong-un last summer in singapore in his own little art of the deal moment, he blurted out that in exchange for no concessions with the north koreans, the u.s. would in fact pull out of the joint exercises and everybody in national security, everybody in the trump administration like white house advisors, everybody was like where did that come from? it's actually in the public record he got that from putin. that is w...