“it's complicated” now.

It's not what we had as recently as 2017 when Trump was threatening to go to war over and

over again with North Korea.

They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.

Now they are not only on speaking terms but literally sitting in a room with each other.

We will have a terrific relationship.

I have no doubt.

Chairman Kim and I just signed a joint statement in which he reaffirmed his unwavering commitment

to complete denuclearization.

The problem with this is that Trump and North Korea have very different views about what

should be accomplished when you denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

The US wants North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

North Korea wants the United States to stop isolating it diplomatically and stop cutting

it off from international markets.

In theory, there is the makings of a deal there.

For Trump, denuclearization means something called CVID: complete, verifiable, irreversible

denuclearization of North Korea.

They give up their nuclear weapons and the US will always be able to make sure that they

have gone away.

However, for North Korea, denuclearization of the Korean peninsula mean something completely

different.

It means, sure, North Korea gets rid of its nukes, but the US also withdrawals all its troops

from the Korean Peninsula and ends its alliance with South Korea.

This has been unacceptable to every American president in the past.

We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless

and until we see that the future negotiation is not going along like it should.

What seems really good for North Korea is really bad by American standards.

There's just not a great middle ground that could actually roll back North Korea's nuclear

program.

No country with a nuclear program as advanced as North Korea's has ever denuclearized.

A 2017 estimate from the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that North Korea probably

has up to 60 nuclear weapons.

It also has ballistic missiles that could potentially hit the American homeland and potentially

a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on one of those rockets.

National security adviser John Bolton floated an idea for dealing with North Korea that

he called,

the Libya model.

So this is to reference an agreement struck with the Bush administration by then Libyan

dictator Muammar Qaddafi to give up his nuclear program.

However, Qaddafi's program was way more limited.

He wasn't really even close to a bomb.

And, perhaps more to the point, about eight years after this agreement was struck in 2011

the US backed an uprising against Qaddafi which killed him.

To Kim, Libya is an example of what happens if you trust the United States too much.

It's an example of what happens if you give up your nuclear weapons.

The main reason they want them is to deter an attack.

Ideally, they want to deter any war from starting by making the war seem really scary and really

dangerous and really bloody.

Normalizing relations is something that I would expect to do, I would hope to do, when

everything is complete.

Normalization is a prize from North Korea's point of view.

It would mean a US embassy in Pyongyang, a North Korean embassy in Washington, ambassadors,

formal diplomatic receptions.

And like I'm saying this and you're probably imagining that sounds ridiculous and you're

right.

Because it's North Korea.

Unwavering commitment to the complete denuclearization

of the Korean peninsula. This is the document

that we just signed.

It's hard to imagine the endgame being some kind of big big deal.

What's more likely is nothing changes or things get worse again.

I think he's going to do these things.

I may be wrong.

I mean I may stand before you in 6 months and say, 'Hey, I was wrong.'

I don't know that I'll ever admit that, but I'll find some kind of an excuse.