Trump bets on North Korea to break his losing streak [View all]

[DonViejo]

The president is quickly turning his sights toward a second nuclear summit with North Korea that could reset a political narrative of domestic frustration.

By ELIANA JOHNSON 02/17/2019 06:53 AM EST

Stung by domestic defeat after a losing battle with Democrats in Washington, D.C., this winter, President Donald Trump hopes his negotiating skills can achieve better results some 8,000 miles away when he meets with North Korea’s leader in Vietnam later this month.

Trump will travel for his second session with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to discuss whether the strongman might relinquish his nuclear weapons in return for an end to economic isolation.

Skeptics call it a fool’s errand. But even some harsh critics of Trump’s foreign policy hold open the possibility that the president mught find it easier to deal with the diminutive Asian tyrant than with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

At a minimum, the Hanoi summit offers Trump a chance to shift a losing political narrative which dates back to the drubbing his party took in November’s midterm elections.

“A lot of positive things are going on,” Trump insisted in a Friday White House news conference mostly devoted to his frustration that Congress had denied him on the border wall funding he’d long demanded. “We’re working on a summit,” he added, predicting that it “will be a very successful one.”

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/17/trump-north-korea-summit-1173297