and not talking about the next steps with iran. that is an unfair criticism. he had an important other obligation. but i think it s hard to fault the times for reporting what was on the minds of those europeans even if the europeans criticism was unfair. jon: it s amazing, vince, when you think about the insults that were flying back and forth between president trump and i guess president kim, you know, the dotard comment and the little rocketman comment and now they re going to have a meeting and potentially denuclearize the peninsula. donald trump s diplomacy is very different. i think you watch a guy like the president of the united states sort of go at a guy like kim jong-un and do something that is very unpredictable, very different, something that the rest of the global community is not used to seeing and turns out
critics who claimed he was going to provoke a military confrontation with north korea. listen here. you remember everybody in the fake news where they were saying, he s going to get us into a nuclear war! he s going to get us into a nuclear war. you know what gets you into nuclear wars? you know what gets you into other wars? weakness. japan, south korea, china, everybody, i think it s going to be a very big success. my attitude is, and if it isn t, it isn t. okay? in an effort to keep the talks on track, the president has done a complete 180 on the rhetoric that he uses towards kim. gone are the derogatory about little rocketman and talking about a brutal dictatorship. since the release of the detainees, the president has been nothing but complimentary.
his hot rhetoric, little rocketman, fire and fury and all that was bringing us to the brink of nuclear war. the senior white house aides i have talked to feel some sense of vindication that the president did have a strategy and a lot of people like ben rhodes from the last straight have been out on social media in the last year saying the president was bringing us to the brink of nuclear war and this was going to blow up in america s face. instead, you have this release of three americans and now happening on the eve of a summit where there s a lot of hart work to be done. a lot of diplomacy that needs to be done. nobody here is spiking the football, but people in the building behind me are saying that compared to where we were eight, ten months ago, the critics saying the president was bringing the nation to the brink of nuclear war, we re in a different place and you can bet the president will talk about that. bill: are you saying singapore is not a solid location? is that what you
we want to thank kim jong-un who really was excellent to these three incredible people. they are really three incredible people. from little rocketman to excellent. seems like the president has changed his tune on dictator kim jong-un. joining us former cia director and now with msnbc and nbc. can you explain for me and the viewers why no previous american president ever got to this point? does this get more difficult from this moment on? first of all it s great that three american citizens have returned home. i mean, we should not diminish at all the significance of that. that is good. but now we are on the eve of a summit meeting between the president of the united states, the most powerful person in the world, and kim jong-un, the leader of north korea who is a
at midnight, 1201, if trump extends it, it is another pattern of extreme threat and we go somewhere quite moderate in the end. kathryn lucy, what s the view from the white house and the folks that you re talking to right now about what this historic meeting really means between north and south korea? do they feel like this is where the u.s. wants to be or is there concern about them kind of potentially moving past and leaving some of our interests, american interests behind? what you see is certainly the president taking credit for this historic place we ve gotten to. it is a huge shift from where we were a few months ago in terms of little rocketman and nuclear threats. fire and fury. but i do think you re hearing from officials there is healthy skepticism about the promises we re hearing. we ve been here before. the negotiations have gotten us here, but where do you go next? and are the promises real or not, and if they re not, do you do another round of this? how do you move thi