president trump issing on way to vietnam. he ll meet for the second time with the north korean dictator kim jong-un. the president says he and kim see eye to eye and predicts a, quote, very tremendous summit. brian todd is joining us right now. brian, the stakes very clearly high for this meeting. the stakes are enormous, wolf, mostly because of what s widely seen as an ineffective deal the two leaders made in singapore a little over eight months ago. today we ve spoken to veteran diplomats who have very specific ideas about what would constitute success or failure at this summit. is a high-stakes meeting that the president is predicting will come down to a personal connection. right after this meeting, i leave for vietnam where i meet with chairman kim and we talk something that, frankly, he never spoke to anybody about. reporter: the president s second summit with north korean dictator kim jong-un comes with the possibilities of huge successes or major pitfalls for the two men.
him about complete denuclearization and peace and i think president trump sees himself on the cusp of a great historical accomplishment. reporter: tonight, as kim moves toward vietnam in his heavily armored train, there s enormous pressure on both leaders to come up with a more substantive deal than the vague agreement they struck in singapore more than eight months ago. it s a test of kim jong-un s sincerity and something that s the most important indicator to watch for in the summit. reporter: mark lippert knows sting about how difficult it is to reach a deal. lippert put his life on the line working toward peace between the two koreas and a u.s. i need an ambulance fast, get me to the hospital. reporter: in 2015, a south korean extremist stabbed him in the face at an event in seoul while lippert served as u.s. ambassador to south korea. he believes a successful summit would be for trump to get kim to make specific commitments. i thnk atink that at a minim would start to
doubts persist about whether the regime is permitted to giving up nuclear weapons. we are speaking loud. i think we can have a very good summit. i think we ll have a very tremendous summit. we want denuclearization. trump spent the weekend tweeting he realized without nuclear weapons his country could fast become one of the greatest economic powers any where in the world but also lowering expectations about what might be adhooefed in the second summit. what is going to happen i can t tell you. i think eventually it would. i don t want to rush anybody. i don t want testing. as long as there s no testing we are happy. despite the rosie outlook they say they are concerned he might con seed too much to kim in vietnam. so far north korea has taken no known concrete steps since the last summit. intelligence officials have concluded they are unlikely to
freezes on nuclear and missile activities and get at the precht program. reductions. more inspections. things we haven t seen before. in other words, a rollback. reporter: lippert and other analysts say expectations this week are not high given that the trump administration seems to have abandoned its earlier request for kim s regime to agree at this summit to give a full inventory list of its nuclear program. and there s no indication kim will stop being secretive about what he has. since the singapore summit, reports have come out that north korea has continued to operate a secret web of missile bases. many of them buried deep in mountains and narrow valleys. given these challenges, what would constitute a failure at the vauietnam summit? it s there no u.s. inspectors scheduled to go into north korea, if they continue to manufacture plutonium and highly enriched uranium, that will be failure. among the concerns from u.s. officials and analysts about president trump maybe giving
and ready talk. michael cohen will testify before three congressional committees this week. is he ready to tell all? he knows about hush money payments and president s business dealings. you re in the situation room. president trump tonight is on the way to a second summit with kim jong un predicting it will be a tremendous success claiming they see eye to eye. there is no tangible sign he is moving towards denuclearization and some white house advisers raised concerns the president could offer too much to north korea. the summit could be overshadowed by action back here at home.