Art of the retreat: Summit failure further scuffs Trump’s dealmaker claims
LA TimesPresident Trump disembarks Air Force One during a refueling in Alaska on his way back to Washington from a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. While Trump relishes televised pomp and ceremony, his summit with Kim was overshadowed when his personal attorney for a decade, Michael Cohen, testified in Congress on Wednesday to new details depicting Trump as a “racist,” a “con man,” and “a cheat.” In a dramatic reveal, Cohen produced a check that he said was reimbursement to him for pre-election hush money to a stripper who alleged a tryst with Trump — a check the president wrote after he took office. Yet just weeks before his second summit, Trump’s intelligence officials testified before Congress that North Korea remained actively involved in building its weapons program and was unlikely to relinquish it. “The problem here, though, is that negotiators for President Trump can reach deals, and then he doesn’t approve them,” said Joel Wit, another veteran of negotiations with North Korea.