NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The White House brushed aside threats by North Korea on Wednesday [5-16-18] to cancel an upcoming summit meeting between President Trump and the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, saying it was still ‘hopeful’ the meeting will happen — but that Mr. Trump would be fine if it did not. ‘The president is ready if the meeting takes place,’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told Fox News on Wednesday. ‘And if it doesn’t, we will continue the maximum pressure campaign that has been ongoing.’ White House officials said they were taking North Korea’s latest warnings in stride, in part because Mr. Kim, not Mr. Trump, had sought the meeting. They said they expected the North to maneuver for tactical advantage in the run-up to the meeting, which is scheduled for June 12 in Singapore. When Mr. Trump was asked on Wednesday about the prospects for the summit to go off as planned, he was noncommittal, telling reporters in the Oval Office, ‘We’ll have to see.’ Mr. Trump said he would still insist on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in the talks.”
–Mark Landler, Choe Sang-Hun and Jane Perlez, “White House Brushes Aside North Korea’s Threats to Cancel Summit With Trump,” The New York Times online, May 16, 2018