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Trump wanted to cancel North Korea summit before Kim Jong Un could

The president was caught between Pompeo and Bolton, say multiple officials.
May.24.2018 Updated May.25.2018
WASHINGTON — Early Thursday morning, after a flurry of calls with a handful of senior advisers, an angry President Donald Trump personally dictated the three-paragraph letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un [ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-renews-threat-quit-summit-warning-nuclear-showdown-after-n876976 ] that canceled the scheduled summit between their two nations.
It had been less than 12 hours since Trump and his team began grappling intensely with the prospects for shelving what would have been a historic meeting between the two heads of state.
But the president, fearing that the North Koreans might beat him to the punch, wanted to be the one to cancel first, multiple officials told NBC News.
"There was no hint of this yesterday," a person briefed on the summit preparations said, calling Trump's decision "high risk, high reward."
[...]
One senior administration official said that Bolton and Pompeo, new to each other since Bolton joined the administration less than two months ago, have been at odds about the summit since it was first proposed. The State Department, this official said, had wanted more advance work done with agreements and decisions on achievable goals made before Trump and Kim met.
"This has been like herding cats," the official said.
Bolton, who has led the effort on the White House side, has worked unilaterally to shape the summit. One person familiar with the summit preparations said it was Bolton who drove the decision to cancel and that he had convinced Trump to make the move. Trump then relayed his decision to Pompeo, who felt blindsided, according to multiple officials.
A driving factor for the president was the belief that Kim was heading toward a similar conclusion.
[...]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/inside-summit-collapse-trump-wanted-cancel-n-korean-leader-could-n877291


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From grin to grim: Inside the Trump-Kim summit collapse
May 24, 2018 Updated May 24, 2018
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/politics/trump-north-korea-summit/index.html


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