NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/SANCTIONS/SUMMIT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s Hanoi summit with Kim Jong Un, meant to demonstrate his diplomatic gamble with North Korea is working, instead ended with no joint agreement after Kim insisted all US sanctions be lifted on his country. That was a bridge too far for the US President, who said Kim offered to take some steps toward dismantling his nuclear arsenal but not enough to warrant ending the debilitating sanctions regime on the country…But it was evident from early in the summit that Trump was seeking to tamp down expectations, repeating he’s in no rush to strike a deal even as North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons program…Trump cast the lack of deal as only a short-term disappointment, even though he’d hoped coming into the talks to be able to point to a new, concrete pathway toward denuclearization. A major agreement struck in Hanoi may also have pushed aside embarrassing headlines about Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen testifying the President is a racist conman.”
-Kevin Liptak and Jeremy Diamond, “‘Sometimes you have to walk’: Trump leaves Hanoi with no deal,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, February 27, 2019 3:46 am