Trump oversold handshake deal with North Korea

It clearly didn't work with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and once again, the two nations are bickering.

Trump erred from the beginning by overhyping the prospects for a North Korean nuclear disarmament agreement after his June 12 meeting in Singapore with Kim. The prospects for such an agreement were never better than minuscule despite all of the statements of goodwill and rapprochement from both sides. Trump added to the likelihood of failure by excluding his top nuclear experts from the talks and assuming that he could wing it once he met face-to-face with Kim.

The result was a vague communiqué that glossed over major points of disagreement and clearly misled the rest of the world about the extent of their progress. The communiqué mentioned an agreement on "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" without describing in any detail what that meant.

Just after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concluded a two-day trip to Pyongyang to nail down some specifics, North Korea denounced the U.S. attitude Saturday as "regrettable" and characterized the U.S. as having made a "unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization."

Contrast that with Pompeo's statement that the visit was "productive" and that progress had been made "on almost all of the central issues."

Someone isn't telling the truth about what really happened.

The secretary later sounded flummoxed by the North Korean reaction. "If those requests were gangster-like, then the world is a gangster because there was a unanimous decision at the U.N. Security Council about what needs to be achieved," he told reporters.

Trump tried Monday to downplay the significance of the new rift, tweeting that he has "confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!"

Trump naively continues to believe that the power of his handshake is enough to make a duplicitous adversary suddenly transform into a reliable negotiating partner. The red herring of his tariff war with China serves only to hide the embarrassment of the breakdown with North Korea.

Trump's penchant for big talk and wild exaggerations has backfired once again. Only this time, he has put the U.S. back on a path toward confrontation with a dangerous and unpredictable new nuclear power.