Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com
With Trump’s history of lying, self-promoting, and terrible deal-making, there was already a great deal of skepticism about his glowing account of this week’s nuclear summit with North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un.
Now, a leaked intelligence report appears to confirm that the skeptics were right.
The classified report, which was obtained by Axios, reveals details from the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s assessment of the Trump-Kim summit.
Those details don’t line up with Trump’s optimistic assessment.
According to Axios, the Israeli intelligence report concludes that “the U.S. retreated from its positions on several issues relating to North Korea’s nuclear program.”
The assessment calls into question the success of the meeting, making a point to note that the deal signed by Trump and Kim Jong Un failed to secure a commitment for “full, irreversible, and verifiable denuclearization” of North Korea.
The deal reached at the summit only calls for “complete” denuclearization.
The report further notes that Trump’s willingness to halt joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea constitutes a “retreat” by the U.S. and an acceptance of China’s longstanding position on the issue, which the U.S. has previously rejected.
In a striking and direct refutation of Trump’s public statements about the summit, the Israeli Foreign Ministry dismissed the unrealistic timeline put forward by Trump and even called into question whether “real and substantive change” will “ever happen” at all.
“Regardless of the smiles in the summit many in Japan, South Korea and the U.S. Congress doubt that North Korea is sincere in its intentions,” the report says, according to Axios.
“Our assessment is that regardless of President Trump’s statements about quick changes that are expected in North Korean policy, the road the real and substantive change if it ever happens, will be long and slow,” it concludes.
We all suspected Trump was exaggerating about what was accomplished, but this report confirms it: Trump’s North Korea deal isn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
