The Real Message of the Hanoi Summit

Democrats and the media are either incapable or just too lazy to see things from a perspective different from their own. This is very evident in the coverage of the recent summit meeting between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
The Press and Democrats have consistently described the meeting as ill-advised, premature and lacking in preparation. They have been so biased that it is rare to hear them refer to it in any other way than “the failed summit.”
The fact that President Trump has gotten further in the negotiations than any other administration is at least deserving of a pause to consider a different perspective.
The Press has reported that the intelligence agencies have judged that North Korea will never give up their Nukes and that Trump is ignoring the intelligence. What is their point? Are they suggesting that Trump should give up and resort to a military solution? Isn’t it possible that our President has a different vision than previous administrations have had and is more optimistic than the intelligence community, the Democrats and the media? I think that President Trump believes that North Korea can achieve a level of economic security that will substitute for the nukes. Democrats and other Republican administrations have always seen the only solution as regime change achieved perhaps through military intervention. They always seem to think that a new regime will somehow magically resort to a democratic form of government as a result of being attacked. The track record for this approach is dismal at best.
Perhaps President Trump believes that taking the Dictator to other places, such as Singapore and Hanoi, might send a different message. It is a message that says we are not trying to replace you and we recognize and trade with these other countries and governments without threatening them because we are not threatened by them.
The media asserts that the Trump team was not prepared for the summit because they were not working enough with other people in the Korean delegation and because the summit did not result in a final deal. This is disingenuous for a couple of reasons. First, the Trump team has been working with the Koreans. Second, the Koreans do not have as much freedom to negotiate as the Press is attributing to them. It is more ignorant because the Press is fully aware that the Democrats in the Senate are still blocking many Trump appointees that might help. By and large I don’t think dictators are inclined to make concessions to committees of lower level people.
The Democrats and the media continually bounce around between fears that Trump will accomplish nothing or that he will give away too much. This perspective is driven by their experience with previous administrations and their inability or unwillingness to think. They have never made any real effort to understand the President and are thus incapable of considering what he might be trying to accomplish. This is why they can’t decide whether they believe a deal will never happen or that Trump is a failure because it hasn’t happened yet.
I have a different perspective as a result of watching the President and trying to understand him, as well as applying the information that is provided.
I think the President has put a grand deal on the table backed by strong sanctions and has no intention of accepting anything less. I think the summit had an immense value in delivering the message that he is willing to negotiate the details but not the final outcome. It might be that he and his team came to believe that Kim Jong Un needed to hear this message directly from the President in a very public way in order to send a message to Korea, Russia and China.
Hopefully, Korea, Russia and China are smarter and more capable of listening than the Democrats and the media. There is every reason to believe they are smarter. Either way, the President has sent a very clear, strong and effective message.