Trump wanted to cancel North Korea summit before Kim Jong Un could
Source: NBC News
The president was caught between Pompeo and Bolton, say multiple officials.
by Courtney Kube, Hallie Jackson, Carol E. Lee, Kristen Welker and Peter Alexander / May.24.2018 / 7:17 PM ET / Updated May.25.2018 / 3:48 AM ET
WASHINGTON — Early Thursday morning, after a flurry of calls with a handful of senior advisers, an angry President Donald Trump personally dictated the three-paragraph letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that canceled the scheduled summit between their two nations.
It had been less than 12 hours since Trump and his team began grappling intensely with the prospects for shelving what would have been a historic meeting between the two heads of state. But the president, fearing that the North Koreans might beat him to the punch, wanted to be the one to cancel first, multiple officials told NBC News.
"There was no hint of this yesterday," a person briefed on the summit preparations said, calling Trump's decision "high risk, high reward."
In the previous hours, the president had listened to blistering rhetoric from North Korea, was contending with inflammatory remarks from his own vice president and caught between competing positions from his secretary of state and his national security adviser, officials said.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/inside-summit-collapse-trump-wanted-cancel-n-korean-leader-could-n877291
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