the outs. they could use that with their leverage with kim jong-un. very interesting to watch. >> certainly, thanks for breaking it down for us, elise. now i want to bring in my panel to dig a little deeper on this situation. we have amy parnes, senior political correspondent for "the hill." julian else selser, a cnn polit analyst and historian at princeton university. and david edlesman is the former bureau chief, now with the national law school. amy, is the president scrambling for political victory here? do you think he wants this to happen too much, where he could lose leverage? >> yes, i definitely think so. i think this is something he wanted all along. he wanted to kind of show he had the foreign policy chops to make something happen that hadn't happened for many years and, you know, people were talking about maybe this would lead to a nobel