ELECTION/JAPAN/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump is isolating himself from allies and even his own advisers on North Korea, eager to insist that his denuclearization efforts will be successful going into a 2020 re-election bid. The widening gap was starkly apparent Monday [5-27-19] morning, when Trump publicly disagreed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a joint press conference when asked about recent North Korean missile tests. Abe had previously called the tests of several short-range ballistic missiles ‘quite a regrettable act’ that violated a United Nations Security Council resolution, echoing language that Trump’s own national security adviser, John Bolton, had used on Saturday. But the president on Monday, at the end of his short trip to Japan to meet the new emperor, insisted that he was not ‘personally’ bothered by the tests and was ‘very happy with the way it’s going’ in his efforts to engage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Notably, Trump said he did not think the tests violated the U.N. resolution.”
–Anita Kumar, “Trump finds himself increasingly alone on North Korea,” Politico, May 27, 2019 11:50 am