testimony this week. i think he was pretty bummed that the summit, at least for now, has been called off. so pompeo and bolton are shaping up as the two poles on diplomacy. courtney kube, it s usually the national security saying everybody calming down, and the secretary of defense is rattling the saber. and the dependents in south korea have gotten in. the military men, the civilians, they ve got to be on edge. yes, you would be surprised. when you talk to them, all of them kind of act like, this is just steady state, this is where we ve been. and we forget, it s a confusing time right now. nobody knows if the summit is going to happen, and if it doesn t happen, what s the next step? but look back to a year ago or even a little bit more than a year ago, april of 2017, up until about september of 2017, when there were people who are very openly talking about how conflict with north korea was inevitable. it seems like the tensions are down from there. and i would say, you know, i wa
2:00 p.m. in washington where the white house is trying to save the date. on june 12th, president trump could be meeting with the leader of north korea face-to-face. that proposed summit in singapore is just two weeks from tomorrow. and last we heard from the president, it s, quote, moving along. it s moving along very nicely, so we re looking at june 12th in singapore. that hasn t changed. and it s moving along pretty well. so we ll see what happens. huh? based on everything that did happen this past week, we know that things can change and change quickly, apparently. it was just four days ago that the president called off the summit because of, quote, tremendous anger and open hostility from pyongyang. but after a second surprise summit and a friendly embrace between the leaders of north and south korea over the weekend, president trump shifted from talk of anger to optimism,
father would do. reporter: the argument s trump lawyers laid out in this letter are ones we have been hearing them make privately for months. cnn reported on this letter last month but now we are getting a detailed look at how the president s lawyers are pushing back against mueller. christi? sarah westwood, thank you. breaking news this hour. kim jong-un is getting ready to meet, apparently, yet another world leader. according to the north korean news agency, syrian president bashar al assad will visit pa yang y pyongyang soon. he held a surprise summit with xi jinping weeks ago and sawing with south korea s president jae-in moon.
weekend to singapore for the summit. so, it is off, as far as we know, but they re leaving open the possibility that it could be back on. josh crashauer, on friday morning, i had senator lindsey graham on my radio show. an absolutely chilling exchange. he said, president trump is going to resolve the korea north nuclear weapons program, one way or another, and he talked explicitly about war. is that the alternative to what s going on here? lindsey graham is being very stark and i think that s the fear from a lot of folk who experienced in north korea in diplomacy. they don t think that the north koreans are ready to play ball. and what we re seeing in the white house is sort of a by the seat of your pants diplomacy, where i think you re seeing a team of rivals emerging within the administration. john bolton, ever since he made that comment about libya, i think that was a red flag for a lot of people who are hawkish on the issue of north korea. that was a message sent to the north
author the politico play book. good to have you with us on this tuesday. thank you. let s turn back for a moment to north korea with the u.s. team both in singapore and inside north korea preparing for a potential summit despite the mixed messaging coming out of the white house. it seems things have not changed. how are things progressing, do you think? are we going to see trump and kim jong-un turn things around or are we still to take the president that this summit is not going to happen? i think, you know, all bets are that this summit is going to happen. you know, trump had a little bluster late last week pretending that he was cancelling the summit and yet still sending the white house team to negotiate the summit s terms. but when the summit does happen, if it actually happens, we should be looking at what actually is accomplished. there was a big report about how this is not going to be a quick and dirty, you know, get rid of all the nuclear weapons in one