So much winning

Hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hailed his two-day visit to Pyongyang as a “productive” round of “good-faith negotiations,” North Korea on Saturday sharply criticized U.S. negotiators’ attitude during the talks as “regrettable” and “robber-like,” accusing the United States of making unilateral demands to denuclearize.

  WaPo

Does this mean the Nobel Prize is off again?

The statement, issued Saturday by an unnamed spokesman and shared by the state-run Korea Central News Agency, said the United States violated the spirit of the June 12 Singapore summit between President Trump and North Norean leader Kim Jong Un. It contradicted statements made earlier by Pompeo, who signaled the visit made “progress on almost all of the central issues.”

You have to wonder: was he lying or is he just that clueless?

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on July 2 that Pompeo would “meet with the North Korean leader and his team.”

[...]

Pompeo did not meet with the North Korean leader during his visit and did not secure a shared understanding of the path to denuclearization.

Win-win, eh?

“While we were hopeful there would be some sort of breakthrough, it seems both sides can't even agree to what transpired after countless hours of talks — and that is a massive problem,” said Harry Kazianis, an Asia expert at the Center for the National Interest.

Last month, Trump told a crowd of supporters that the remains of 200 service members had “been sent back,” but U.S. military officials later said that was not the case.

[...]

Pompeo said the issues of the testing facility and recovering U.S. remains still need to be finalized. “We now have a meeting set up for July 12 — it could move by one day or two — where there will be discussions between the folks responsible for the repatriation of remains,” he said.

[...]

Pompeo told reporters Saturday that the two countries would soon hold working-level talks on the destruction of Pyongyang’s testing facility for missile engines.

Color me skeptical.

When asked if he came any closer to setting out a timeline to denuclearize, Pompeo said, “I’m not going to get into details of our conversations, but we spent a good deal of time talking . . . and I think we made progress in every element of our discussions.”

So, that's a "no" then.

Evans Revere, a former U.S. diplomat with a long history of negotiating with North Korea, said that it was evident now that talks in Pyongyang had not gone well — and that it appeared North Korea may have no intention of actually denuclearizing in the way the United States would want.

A feather in Kim's cap. He owned the US president.

[Pompeo] has elicited North Korean ire, and he has now seen the reality of North Korea’s game plan and intentions that many of us have been describing for some time,” Revere added. “Welcome to our world, Mr. Secretary.”