TRUMP TRASHES ALLIES ON WAY TO KIM

Trump blows up G-7 – Kim next

FRESH OFF a diplomatic dustup with America’s most crucial allies, President Trump arrived in Singapore on Sunday for a hotly anticipated, highstakes summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump descended from Air Force One after touching down at 8:21 p.m. local time at the island city-state’s Paya Lebar Air Base, saying he felt “very good” before speeding off to his hotel.

At the historic meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning, the leaders of the two longtime enemy nations hope to hash out a deal on the fate of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

It will be the first sitdown between a sitting President and a North Korean leader.

Trump flew to Singapore from Canada, after sparking a diplomatic blowup by pulling out of a joint statement with leaders of the Group of 7 nations out of anger at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trump is hoping for a better outcome from talks with the volatile North Korean despot, who has said he is willing to get rid of his nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees and economic sanctions relief — a claim greeted with skepticism by many experts on the region.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a leading Republican on foreign policy issues, said he’s already preparing for the possibility of war if talks fail — and has drafted an authorization of military force against North Korea to be introduced in Congress if necessary.

“There’s three outcomes here: peace, where we have a win-win solution; military force, where we devastate the North Korean regime and stop their program by force; or to capitulate like we’ve done in the past. And Donald Trump is not going to capitulate,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“So there’s really only two options: peace or war.”

Graham said he agreed with a letter sent by leading Democratic senators in which they said that any deal offering sanctions relief to the North must provide for permanent, irreversible and verifiable dis-

mantling of the regime’s nuclear arsenal.

But he said Democrats should go a step further and agree to military force if a deal does not work out.

“If diplomacy fails, as a last resort Democrats and Republicans need to put the military option on the table, or we’ll never get a good deal,” he said.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump is taking a big risk by going into the unprecedented summit without much preparation.

“The President has gone into a high-wire act without a safety net, and the preparation for this type of summit — while we applaud robust diplomacy — the preparation for this type of summit, to test the proposition of what Kim Jong Un is really willing to do or not, has not taken place,” he said on “This Week.”

Menendez said striking a deal with Kim would not be too hard — but ensuring the country actually followed through would be the challenge.

“Getting a deal with North Korea is not the difficult part. In fact, three administrations — President Clinton, President Bush and President Obama — have acquired some form of deal, only ultimately to have them fail,” he said. “It’s getting the right deal.”

Menendez would not support Graham’s call for an authorization of military force.

“I’m not ready to give an authorization for a use of military force to this President, or any other one, until I understand that the path for peace is not attainable, and that the threat continues to be a real challenge to the national security of the United States,” he said. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) agreed. “There is no military solution to the problem that exists on the Korean Peninsula,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “This would become very catastrophic very quickly. We have 28,000 troops right on the demilitarized line. We have 250,000 other Americans within a 10-mile radius of that border. The casualties would mount up so quickly.”

In Singapore, Kim had already arrived for the meeting hours before Trump did, and met with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Trump was scheduled to meet with Lee on Monday.

“The entire world is watching this historic summit,” Kim told Lee.

At Tuesday’s summit, the two men were expected to be alone in the room with the exception of two translators, leaving their advisers waiting outside. Trump has said he thinks he’ll know within the first minute whether Kim is serious about shedding nuclear weapons.

Singapore is picking up the tab for hosting the summit, estimated at $20 million.

It’s only the fourth time Kim has publicly left his country since he took power in 2011.

Menendez said that he has already benefited from the hubbub around his summit with Trump. “To the extent that Kim Jong Un has already gone from international pariah to being normalized internationally, you have to say that he’s had some success here,” the senator said on “This Week.”

Also heading for Singapore was former NBA star Dennis Rodman, who said on Twitter he was flying in for the summit to “give whatever support is needed” to both leaders.

Rodman was spotted at Kennedy Airport on Sunday, where he went through security with an entourage of about half a dozen people, an employee said.

He was headed for Seoul on a Korean Airlines flight, where he then planned to take a connecting flight to Singapore.