As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump positioned himself as an outsider who’d shake up Washington. He claimed that only he could fix long-standing problems that politicians had ignored.
One of those issues was the U.S.’s intractable relationship with North Korea. Trump saw it as a battle between two men instead of two countries’ geopolitical differences. “Just get me in the room with the guy [Kim Jong Un] and I’ll figure it out,” Trump has said, according to a White House source.
Over the past year, Trump has baited Kim with insults and praise, hoping to bring him to the table. Eventually, both parties agreed to a summit on June 12 in Singapore.
The White House celebrated by issuing a commemorative coin.
On May 24, Trump wrote a letter to Kim, canceling the planned summit.
The letter was conciliatory in tone, but he claimed a North Korean official calling Mike Pence “ignorant and stupid” as the deal-killer: “Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote.
The letter also contained a quick hit of Trump’s trademark braggadocio: “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”
The summit cancellation comes after some major missteps by the Trump Administration. National security advisor John Bolton suggested North Korea should be denuclearized following the Libya model. (After Libya turned over its nuclear weapons, its dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, was captured and died.)
Vice President Mike Pence doubled down on Bolton’s ill-advised comments, saying that North Korea could end up like Libya if it didn’t make a nuclear deal with Washington. This prompted North Korean diplomat Choe Son Hui to lash out at Pence. “As a person involved in U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing from the mouth of the U.S. vice president,” she said, according to state news agency KNCA.
Hours after Trump’s letter to Kim, he reverted to the hostile tone that has marked the U.S.-North Korea relationship for decades. He warned that the United States and its allies are prepared to respond should “foolish or reckless acts be taken by North Korea.”
Although the summit is canceled and tensions between the U.S. and North Korea are heating up once again, there is one place where people can still find hope: the White House gift shop.
After the summit was canceled, the website released a jumbled statement that feels as if it came from the president himself celebrating the political near-miss:
Here’s the full letter Trump wrote to Kim Jong Un:
Share image via The White House Gift Shop.
