he s used as tenure as national security adviser. when asked about his boss recent comments about the mueller investigation which president trump called both a hoax and a witch-hunt. he said this. the hoax is the idea that the trump campaign was the beneficiary of a concerted effort together with the russians to affect the 2016 election. reporter: he also echoed secretary of state pompeo s comments last week before the senate foreign relations committee. during testimony, he insisted president trump does accept the intel community s findings of russian meddling, jon. jon: he also had pushback against north korea skeptics. what s that all about? reporter: that s right, he said the whole world is waiting with bated breath for another trump-kim summit. the national security team is laser focused on one key issue. our priority is north korean denuclearization. kim jong-un promised south korean president moon jae-in at
limb, thinking that somehow this time might be different. officials have reportedly told axios, that before another summit between the president and kim could take place in the u.s., north korea would have to show progress toward denuclearization. what do you think of the prospect of kim jong un visiting the united states? there have been reports they might do some sort of a sideline meeting during the u.n. general assembly in september. so let s take a step back for a second. what exactly did we get out of singapore? we got nothing. we didn t get an agreement, we got a vague statement where north korea reiterated previous promises. we know what north korea got. they got the status of a bilateral meeting, something they ve sought for decades. they also got the united states surprisingly to announce that we would suspend this sort of cooperation that we had in the upcoming military exercises that
we have with south korea. so the north korean side got those two things. we didn t get one thing. why would we want to continue going down this road and now give kim jong un the benefit of a meeting with the president in the united states unless we get something to show that this isn t just some sort of game in which we re being played. which right now, clearly, appears to be the case. i want to quickly get to what s happening. the nato meeting in brussels this week. it happens the president leaves on tuesday after announcing his pick for the supreme court monday night. i want to have you listen to what the president said about nato this week. here it is. we re paying for anywhere from 70 to 90% to protect europe and that s fine. of course they kill us on trade. kill us on other things. so they want to protect against russia. yet they pay billions of dollars to russia, and we re the schmucks that are paying for the whole thing. what is the effect of
this cycle of hope and inevitable disappointment when it comes to dealing with north korea on this issue of eliminating its nuclear weapons program. to be clear, secretary pompeo traveled back to the region with a mission. he was there to flesh out the details of that vaguely worded joint declaration that the president and kim signed at the singapore summit just last month. remember the president touted that as a game-changing moment on twitter. he said north korea no long irposes a nuclear threat. he said that americans could sleep well at night that put the pressure on the secretary of state to really produce some tangible results. well now you have the north koreans saying that the u.s. team s attitude was regrettable. and by way of contrast, take a look at how the secretary of state characterized his meetings sometimes after they wrapped up. we made progress on almost all of the central issues. some places a great deal of progress. other places there s still more work to be done.
exactly what he should have done. we want denuclearization. we want an agreement on inspections and verification. we want all of the things that were hinted at in that summit declaration. but there was no detail provided. one of the most important things to understand, where we are right now is that we do not have a denuclearization agreement with the north koreans. one of the things that secretary pompeo was trying to achieve in pyongyang was to put meat on the skeleton of this alleged denuclearization deal. evans revere, i m so glad to have you on this breaking news day. thank you so much. new reaction to the new york times report which suggests that chances president trump would voluntarily agree to a meeting with special counsel robert mueller, they are growing increasingly unlikely. nbc news white house correspondent kelly o donnell just got off the phone with trump attorney rudy giuliani and is joining us from berkeley heights, new jersey where the president is staying this