this is kind of a crazy time meike right now. you have an acting secretary of state, no ambassador to korea, and the president halfway down the road for the first ever state-to-state summit with the head of north korea. where are we right now? i m not sure that anyone could tell you. and i m pretty sure the trump administration doesn t have a map to this either. you know, we re missing a lot of the people that you would need to work out the details of a summit like this. this is really high stakes diplomacy. we are talking about a high-wire trapeze act here with no net underneath them. and the risk of this president slipping is really quite high. jeffrey, you follow this issue closely for a while. i want to ask you about the veracity of one of the president s tweets. north korea announced they re suspending tests of their weapons the last week. the president tweeting we haven t given up anything they have agreed to denuclearization. so great for world. site closure, no more testing
the north koreans are willing to say that they are going to talk about denuclearization. but i think the place where that gets a little bit messed up is du nuclearization for north korea does not mean north korea giving up its nuclear weapons. so yes, they re going to take a pause in testing long-range missiles, and they re going to take a pause in testing nuclear weapons. but at the end of the day, north korea is not going to give up the nuclear weapons that it has now. and so that s where i think it s not true. well, so what is this all about? if that s that seems like you re saying the conclusion is already fixed here, that they re not going to give up their weapons. so what s going on? i have no idea what the president thinks he is doing. i mean, that s what is so bizarre about this. the north koreans have made it clear, and they just release another statement the other day that the reason they re stopping testing is the arsenal is finished. they call it their powerful
without getting much in return. wow, we haven t given up anything, the president tweeted. and they have agreed to denuclearization so great for the world site closure, and no more testing. north korea has suspended missile testing and announced plans to shut down a nuclear test facility, but there has been no agreement yet on giving up their nuclear weapons. sarah, on north korea, is the president willing to accept anything short of complete denuclearization before lifting any sanctions? certainly the goal is denuclearization of the peninsula, and we re going to continue the maximum pressure campaign that has been ongoing to north korea until we see concrete actions taken towards complete and total denuclearization. so, let s get to jon karl, with us live tonight from the white house. and jon, mike pompeo, the president s pick for secretary of state, as we know, recently met with kim jong-un in north korea. they kept that under wraps for days.
and andglected neglected. this president is not doing his job in many ways. that means you need people who will excel. let me ask you about the issue of north korea right now which i m not sure there is foreign policy issue of greater ur urgency. the president said we haven t given up anything and they have agreed to denuclearization. the president is wrong. kim jong-un has not agreed to that. he has agreed to no more testing and closing one of the sites here. leave denuclearization out for a second. the no more testing, site closure, do you see that as a positive development? if there were a democratic president in office right now would you not be out lauding this as a move in the right direction? these things could be very good. we have to remember in the last dozen years we have been to the
denuclearization. so great for world. site closure and no more testing. we re a long way from conclusion on north korea. maybe things will work out. maybe they won t. only time will tell. but the work i am doing now should have been done a long time ago. funny how all of the pundits that couldn t come close to making a deal on north korea are now all over the place telling me how to make a deal. good twitter read. how was my trumtrump? really good. a story about relationship with personal attorney michael cohen whose dealings with under scrutiny. for years mr. trump treated mr. cohen poorly with gratuitous insults, dismissive statements, and at least twice threats of being fired. according to interviews with half a dozen people familiar with their relationship. in a tweet trump singled out one of three reporters on the story, quote, the new york times and a third-rate reporter named maggie haberman known as crooked h i don t speak to, are going