Bolton defends Hanoi summit

Interests of U.S. advanced with North Korea, he asserts

WASHINGTON — The White House national security adviser on Sunday described President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a success despite the lack of an agreement.

“I don’t agree at all that it was a failed summit,” John Bolton said on Fox News Sunday. “I think the obligation of the president of the United States is to defend and advance American national security interests. And I think he did that by rejecting a bad deal and by trying again to persuade Kim Jong Un to take the big deal that really could make a difference for North Korea.”

Bolton also spoke on CNN’s State of the Union and CBS’ Face the Nation. In his three interviews, he made the case that Trump

advanced America’s push for the verifiable dismantling of the North’s nuclear sites.

The U.S. and North Korea have offered contradictory accounts of why last week’s summit in Vietnam broke down, though both pointed to American sanctions as a sticking point.

Trump abruptly cut short his meeting with Kim in Hanoi last week after the two leaders were unable to reach a deal. The president first met with the North Korean leader in June in Singapore.

Bolton said the leaders left on good terms and that Trump, with his departure, made an important point to North Korea and other countries that negotiate with him.

“He’s not desperate for a deal, not with North Korea, not with anybody if it’s contrary to American national interests,” Bolton said.

However, in a tweet Sunday night, Trump raised another possibility. He said the congressional testimony of Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, may have been partly responsible for the collapse in negotiations.

Over seven hours while Trump was in Hanoi, Cohen testified that Trump manipulated financial records and knew in advance about WikiLeaks’ efforts to release damaging information about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 campaign.

“For the Democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster, at the same time as the very important Nuclear Summit with North Korea, is perhaps a new low in American politics and may have contributed to the ‘walk,’” he tweeted. “Never done when a president is overseas. Shame!”

The president had announced the dates for his second summit with Kim during his State of the Union address on Feb. 5. On Feb. 20, the committee said that Cohen would testify last Wednesday. Cohen had originally been scheduled to testify Feb. 7 but canceled, citing potential threats against his family.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, declined to comment on Trump’s tweet Sunday night.

Whatever the reason for the end of the summit, Bolton said there is “no expiration date” for talks on denuclearization.

“The president is fully prepared to keep negotiating at lower levels or to speak to Kim Jong Un again when it’s appropriate,” he said on CBS.

Bolton argued that Trump has “turned traditional diplomacy on its head, and after all in the case of North Korea, why not? Traditional diplomacy has failed in the last three administrations.”

OTTO WARMBIER

Bolton also defended Trump’s statement about American college student Otto Warmbier, who was held prisoner in North Korea, then sent home in a vegetative state.

Trump said at a news conference last week that Kim “tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”

Bolton said Trump’s “got a difficult line to walk” in negotiating with North Korea, arguing that Trump’s statement did not necessarily mean that he believed Kim.

“It doesn’t mean that he accepts it as reality. It means that he accepts that’s what Kim Jong Un said,” Bolton said.

Bolton emphasized that the president “has been very clear both in public, and I’ve heard him in private in the Oval Office, that he considers what happened to Otto Warmbier to be despicable and barbaric.”

Asked on State of the Union whether he takes Kim at his word, Bolton replied, “My opinion doesn’t matter. … I am not the national security decision-maker. That’s [the president’s] view.”

Warmbier’s family says he was brutally tortured while imprisoned in North Korea. He died in 2017 after returning to the United States in a coma. In a statement Friday, Warmbier’s parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, sharply rebuked Trump for seeming to hold Kim blameless for their son’s death.

Bolton on Sunday called for North Korea to give a clear accounting of who was responsible for Warmbier’s death.

On Fox News, Chris Wallace told Bolton that Trump’s statement was “not the first time the president has sided with an autocrat over outside evidence.” When Wallace asked why the president seems to trust Kim, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the reports of U.S. intelligence, Bolton suggested that American national interests were “weightier, and much more important” than some statements by world leaders.

“Look, foreign leaders who are friends of ours lie to our face as well,” Bolton said. “This is nothing new in international relations.”

Lawmakers from both parties took issue with Trump’s statement on Warmbier.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., a close Trump ally, broke with the president, saying the North Korean leader was aware of Warmbier’s condition and ultimately responsible for his death.

“I think Kim knew what happened, which was wrong,” McCarthy said on This Week.

Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, summarized the summit as a “spectacular failure” made worse by Trump’s comments on “the murder of an American citizen, Otto Warmbier.”

“This is, I think, the result of a president who is not prepared for these kind of negotiations, a staff that is not well-prepared and that is essentially flying by the seat of its pants, and it has real-world consequences,” Schiff, D-Calif., said on Face the Nation.

Schiff and others have been critical of Trump for letting Kim stand with him on the world stage given North Korea’s poor human-rights record. The concern is that Kim will be able to portray himself to his people and supporters as the charismatic head of a nuclear-armed power, boosting his prestige and influence.

Schiff also said Trump made a concession to Kim by agreeing to end the largescale springtime military drills with South Korea, which the two countries described as an effort to support diplomacy with North Korea. The drills will be replaced with smaller exercises.

Trump, however, said the agreement would financially benefit the United States.

“The reason I do not want military drills with South Korea is to save hundreds of millions of dollars for the U.S. for which we are not reimbursed,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “That was my position long before I became President. Also, reducing tensions with North Korea at this time is a good thing!”

Bolton