"Mr. Trump was surprised and angered"

President Trump, increasingly concerned that his summit meeting in Singapore next month with North Korea’s leader could turn into a political embarrassment, has begun pressing his aides and allies about whether he should take the risk of proceeding with a historic meeting that he had leapt into accepting, according to administration and foreign officials.

Mr. Trump was both surprised and angered by a statement issued on Wednesday by the North’s chief nuclear negotiator, who declared that the country would never trade away its nuclear weapons capability in exchange for economic aid, administration officials said.

  NYT

Mr. Trump pretty much stays surprised and angered. No one else was surprised. Because everyone else pays attention to things other than TV ratings. Maybe Mr. T-Rump should take a fucking clue.

On Thursday and Friday, Mr. Trump peppered aides with questions about the wisdom of proceeding, and on Saturday night he called President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to ask why the North’s public statement seemed to contradict the private assurances that Mr. Moon had conveyed after he met Kim Jong-un [...] in late April.

Oh, yes, it's all Moon's fault.  I hope Moon told him that things were looking fine right up until that idiot John Bolton opened his fat trap and Trump suggested Kim might get a dagger up his ass.

But, wait a minute. Isn't Mr. Trump the best deal-maker in the world? What's the risk? He keeps telling us he's the one who can fix what all the previous presidents have fucked up and failed at. Surely he isn't afraid of being embarrassed.

It was a sign of Mr. Trump’s discomfort, some officials speculated, that he could not wait [the three days] to discuss the issue until Mr. Moon arrived for his meetings here, though there is no indication that the president is considering pulling out of the North Korea talks.

Seriously, Times reporter? You have just said in the first paragraph that Trump is "pressing his aides and allies about whether he should take the risk of proceeding." In fact, in the very sentence in which you say there's no indication that he's considering pulling out, you say he's so stressed that he can't wait three days to talk about it. How are those things not indications that he's considering pulling out?

Mr. Trump’s aides have grown concerned that the president — who has said that “everyone thinks” he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts — has signaled that he wants the summit meeting too much.

[...]

Moreover, Mr. Trump’s decision this month to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal raises the stakes for the North Korea negotiation. If he emerges with anything less than what President Barack Obama got, which in Iran included the verified shipment of 97 percent of all nuclear material out of the country, it will be hard for Mr. Trump to convince anyone other than his base that the negotiation was a success.

Damn! He could almost taste that Nobel.

Mr. Moon and his aides reported that Mr. Kim seemed highly conversant with all elements of the program when the two men met, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made similar comments about Mr. Kim, based on his two meetings with him in Pyongyang, the North’s capital.

But aides who have recently left the administration say Mr. Trump has resisted the kind of detailed briefings about enrichment capabilities, plutonium reprocessing, nuclear weapons production and missile programs that Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush regularly sat through.

He didn't think he had to know. He thought his big, blustery bullshit scared Kim.

The South has been advocating a more traditional confidence-building approach, in which concessions by the North result in a gradual lifting of sanctions. But Mr. Trump has said he will not repeat that technique, because it led to failure by his four immediate predecessors.

[...]

South Korean officials say that John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s new national security adviser, has been in near daily contact with his counterpart in Seoul, trying to work out a strategy.

Mr. Bolton has been clear that in his view the president should use the Singapore meeting to declare that the North must give up its entire arsenal and nuclear infrastructure before crippling economic sanctions are eased.

Because crippling economic sanctions have prevented him from creating a nuclear arsenal in the first place? Jesus, these guys are in charge of this country.

“If Trump is truly expecting to see a handover of nuclear weapons in six months, without anything in return, that is very unrealistic,” said Joseph Yun, the State Department’s North Korea coordinator until he retired a few months ago.

You think? It's not hard to see why Mr. Yun retired.

Mr. Pompeo said on ABC News late last month: “This administration has its eyes wide open. We know the history. We know the risks.” He said the only measure of success would be “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization,” a phrase first used in the Bush administration, for which it proved unattainable.

Proving immediately that "we" don't know the history at all.

Mr. Bolton has repeatedly cited the case of Libya, which turned over all of its nuclear-related equipment in 2003, as a model to follow for denuclearization. Libya received promises of economic integration with the West, little of which happened.

And Mr. Kim has seen how that worked out. Not to mention, Libya had an old, outdated nuclear program with no actual nuclear weapon or missile delivery.

Bolton is a madman, and Trump thinks he's talking about taking out Kim when Bolton references "the Libyan model."

“Now that model would take place if we don’t make a deal, most likely,” Mr. Trump warned, seeming to repeat exactly the threat that the North Koreans had warned against.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.