Unraveling of Korea talks shows what happens when TV junkies collide

The Trump administration is a cable-news presidency. President Donald Trump, known for his aversion to detailed briefings, often sets much of his agenda during his morning "executive time" sessions - that is, watching and frequently tweeting about cable shows like Fox and Friends.

But Trump isn't the only world leader with a cable-TV package: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is apparently another consumer of American news coverage. And, as became clear this week, that should cause the Trump administration to think hard about how it publicly portrays the president's upcoming summit with Kim.

The much-anticipated meeting, scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, will likely be the most important diplomatic event of the year. But on Wednesday, North Korea suddenly undercut the hype, announcing that it would postpone talks with South Korea because of Seoul's joint military exercises with the United States. Then it suggested it could pull out of the summit with Trump, too.

The threats weren't entirely unexpected. As many analysts noted, North Korea often backtracks on promises as a negotiating tactic.

Alison Evans tweeted "One reason NorthKoreathreatened to cancel the 12 June summit?It's leadership likely recognises how important optics are to Donald Trump...North Korea just won lots of photos and an hour of footage from the Kim-Moon summit - Kim Jong Un doesn't need another photo-op just yet."

But later on Wednesday, North Korea released another statement that presented more significant objections to the Trump administration's view of the Singapore summit. The complaints seemed to come in response to cable-news appearances by U.S. officials.

This past weekend, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton appeared on Sunday talk shows and discussed Trump's plans for his meeting with Kim. Pompeo reiterated to Fox News that the United States would demand the "the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea," while Bolton told CNN that North Korea is in a weak position due to Trump's "maximum pressure" policy of economic and diplomatic isolation.

That's a controversial assertion in Pyongyang, considering former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi died in 2011 and his country has been ravaged by conflict since. And North Korea has apparently been paying attention. In Pyongyang's latest statement, nuclear negotiator and current Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan took aim at "high-ranking officials of the White House and the Department of State including Bolton" for their comments.

The "world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq which have met miserable" fates, Gwan said, later mentioning feelings of "repugnance" for Bolton - something already well-established by North Korean state media.

Kim isn't alone in his skepticism of the "Libya model." Even were the plan acceptable to North Korea, American experts doubt it would be feasible given how much larger Pyongyang's nuclear program is than Libya's former efforts. "The Libyan program could fit in a two-car garage," said Christopher R. Hill, a former State Department official who led talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration, at an event this week. "I don't think Libya has much to do with it."

If the criticism of Trump's national security adviser was designed to sow dissent in the ranks, it may work: Trump doesn't like being undercut by his staff, and Bolton's message is more aggressive than Trump's recent conciliatory tone toward Kim.

"This is the President Trump model," said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to CNN on Wednesday, downplaying Bolton's comments. Ankit Panda, a senior editor at the Diplomat magazine, suggested on Twitter that North Korea may demand Bolton be kept home from the Singapore talks - something it also did in 2003.

"The surest way for the summit to end in disaster is if President Trump enters with the false belief that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula means Kim Jong Un unilaterally surrendering his nuclear weapons," said Vipin Narang, an expert on nuclear nonproliferation at MIT, to my colleague Anna Fifield last month.

If nothing else, North Korea's threat has brought the feel-good vibe to a screeching halt. The Trump administration had taken a triumphant tone over the past few months; one unnamed European official told the Guardian that Trump officials privately suggested Kim had chosen to "surrender in front of the American power."

Trump himself has hyped the Singapore summit as if it were a pay-per-view event. On Wednesday, however, Trump was uncharacteristically mute. "We will have to see," he told reporters when asked whether the summit was still on.