Trump abruptly cuts short North Korea summit after dispute over sanctions: 'Sometimes you have to walk'

President Trump abruptly walked away from negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam and headed back to Washington on Thursday afternoon, saying the U.S. is unwilling to meet Kim's demand of lifting all sanctions on the rogue regime without first securing its meaningful commitment to denuclearization.
Trump, speaking in Hanoi, Vietnam, told reporters he had asked Kim to do more regarding his intentions to denuclearize, and “he was unprepared to do that.”
“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump said at a solo press conference following the summit.
Trump specifically said negotiations fell through after the North demanded a full removal of U.S.-led international sanctions in exchange for the shuttering of the North's Yongbyon nuclear facility. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that the United States wasn't willing to make a deal without the North committing to giving up its secretive nuclear facilities outside Yongbyon, as well as its missile and warheads program.
“It was about the sanctions,” Trump said. “Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that. They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that.”
"I'd much rather do it right than do it fast," Trump added, echoing his remarks from earlier in the day, when he insisted that "speed" was not important. "We're in position to do something very special."
Both leaders motorcades roared away from the downtown Hanoi summit site within minutes of each other after both a lunch and the signing ceremony were scuttled. Trump's closing news conference was moved up, and he departed for Washington on Air Force One several hours ahead of schedule.

"Sometimes you have to walk."
— President Trump on his dealings with North Korea

The president said he trusted Kim's promise that he would not resume nuclear and missile testing, but that the current U.S. sanctions would stay in place.

President Trump and Kim Jong Un failed to reach an agreement on denuclearization. (Associated Press)

“No agreement was reached at this time, but their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement prior to Trump's press conference.
Regardless, Sanders described the meetings between Trump and Kim as “very good and constructive.”
As for a potential third summit, Trump remained noncommittal.
Kim had signaled during an earlier, unprecedented question-and-answer session with reporters that he is "ready to denuclearize," reaffirming a commitment long sought by the Trump administration and the international community.
“If I’m not willing to do that, I won’t be here right now,” Kim said through an interpreter.
"That's a good answer," Trump replied.

President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un take a walk after their first meeting at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. At front right is Kim Yong Chol, a North Korean senior ruling party official and former intelligence chief. At left is national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, second from left. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Trump and Kim signed a document during last year's summit in Singapore agreeing to work toward the "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," but tensions have since flared between the two nations, and North Korea later said it would not remove its nuclear weapons unless the U.S. first reduced its own nuclear threat.
A working lunch was supposed to get underway between the two leaders in Vietnam on Thursday afternoon, after a whirlwind day on Capitol Hill that threatened to steal the spotlight from the second major summit between the two leaders. But neither Trump nor Kim showed up.
Earlier, history appeared to have been made when Kim answered questions from a foreign journalist -- almost certainly for the first time ever.
Asked by a member of the White House press pool about his outlook for Thursday's summit, Kim said: "It's too early to say. I won't make predictions. But I instinctively feel that a good outcome will be produced."
South Korea's Unification Ministry, which deals in affairs with North Korea, couldn't confirm whether it was the first time Kim answered a question from a foreign journalist.
Asked if he was willing to allow the U.S. to open an office in Pyongyang, Kim said through a translator, "I think that is something which is welcomable."
Reporters didn't get opportunities to ask questions of Kim during his three summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his four meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Kim ignored questions shouted at him during his first summit with Trump last June in Singapore.
Trump, speaking next to Kim at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel, said that "a lot of great ideas" are "being thrown about." He asserted that "when you have a good relationship, a lot of good things happen."
"I just want to say: I have great respect for Chairman Kim, and I have great respect for his country," Trump told reporters as he sat at a table across from Kim in Hanoi. "And I believe it will be something -- hard to compete with for other countries. It has such potential."
Kim, meanwhile, said the "whole world" was watching the talks and suggested that, for some, the image of the two "sitting side by side" must resemble "a fantasy movie."

People watch a TV screen showing U.S. President Donald Trump's press conference, during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019. The nuclear summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un collapsed Thursday after the two sides failed to reach a deal due to a standoff over U.S. sanctions on the reclusive nation, a stunning end to high-stakes meetings meant to disarm a global threat. The signs read: " Trump talks with North Korea about denuclearization." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Trump added that while reaching a lasting agreement was critical, "speed is not important." The two leaders then retired to begin their negotiations privately, but were photographed shortly afterward walking on the Metropole hotel's pool patio, where they were joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean official Kim Yong Chol.
The group then went into a glass-enclosed area and sat down around a table for more talks.
Last year, at the Singapore summit, Trump caught U.S. ally South Korea off guard by announcing the suspension of major U.S. military exercises with the South. Trump critics said he squandered critical U.S. leverage before the North had taken any concrete steps toward denuclearization.
For his part, Moon Jae-in said he plans to offer new proposals for inter-Korean engagement following the high-stakes nuclear summit. Moon's announcement is planned for a Friday ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of a 1919 uprising by Koreans against Japan's colonial rule and will likely include plans for economic cooperation between the rival Koreas.

President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One after a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

It was widely presumed that Trump made the decision during his private talks with Kim — his description of the war games as "very provocative" seemed to be in line with North Korea's view of the drills as rehearsals for invasions. Both Washington and Seoul have insisted for years that the exercises were routine and defensive in nature.
Bong Young-shik, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University, was less worried, saying that the criticism Trump faced in Singapore could make him less likely to make huge, impulsive decisions during his private meetings with Kim this time around.
"There's always a certain level of risk in this kind of meeting, but it's hard to say Trump will be dragged into a decision by Kim just because of what happened in Singapore," Bong said.
Former President Barack Obama was known to occasionally hold impromptu chats with leaders on the sidelines of major global summits with only their interpreters at their sides.
At former President Ronald Reagan's first meeting with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva in November 1985, the two men met alone with only trusted interpreters. Only 15 minutes had been allotted for the discussion, but it went on for an hour.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Kamala Harris ‘mischaracterized’ past SF policy on undocumented minors, CNN says

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., listens to a question at a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H., Monday, Feb. 18, 2019. (Associated Press)

U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris “mischaracterized” a 2008 San Francisco policy regarding undocumented minors when she participated in a CNN podcast earlier this week, the network asserted Wednesday.
Harris -- a California Democrat who is seeking the party's 2020 presidential nomination -- made the comments while speaking to an audience in Iowa on Sunday on “Political Party Live,” the network reported.
According to CNN, host Misty Rebik asked Harris about a past report by the network that claimed Harris backed a San Francisco policy of reporting arrests of undocumented juveniles to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Harris responded by saying the notification of ICE was an “unintended consequence” of the city policy, enacted by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. (Newsom is now governor of California, while Harris is a U.S. senator after being the district attorney of San Francisco from 2004-2011 and then attorney general of California from 2011-2017.)
CNN reported Wednesday, however, that the ICE-notification component was part of the policy itself, not an “unintended consequence.”
Ian Sams, a spokesman for Harris, responded to the network’s assertion that Harris had “mischaracterized” the matter.
"As Governor Newsom has said, the initial policy was intended to protect the sanctuary status of San Francisco, which Senator Harris has always supported and defended," Sams said in a statement. "We have said this policy should have been done differently, but as Senator, Harris is focused on protecting Dreamers, fighting this president's attempts to build a vanity project on the southern border, exercising more oversight of ICE, reforming our immigration system with a path to citizenship, and reuniting families separated by this administration. Those will be her priorities should she be elected president."
The question of whether city police departments will alert federal immigration authorities about undocumented immigrants who are charged with crimes has been a focus of the “sanctuary cities” debate between liberal-leaning cities and the Trump administration.
Last March, Harris contended that ICE officials were potentially overstepping their authority by pursuing illegal immigrants who pose no safety threat to the public.
Thomas Homan, who was then acting director of ICE, responded by saying, “We're not abusing our authority, we are enforcing the law."
After Newsom left the mayor's job in 2011, his successor changed the policy so that police would report to ICE only unaccompanied juvenile undocumented immigrants who were arrested, the report said. Then two years later San Francisco passed an ordinance that blocked ICE from receiving any information about people under arrest, except in limited circumstances.

Trump 'impressed' that Cohen told House panel he saw no collusion between campaign, Russia

President Trump, speaking in Vietnam on Thursday after the abrupt end of his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, said he was actually “impressed” with his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who told a U.S. House panel grilling him Wednesday that there was no collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia.
But Cohen told members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee that while he didn't know of "direct evidence" of improper collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, he had his “suspicions.”
Trump, responding to a question about Cohen’s hearing from ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, said that he thought the Cohen hearing could have been held a few days after his second summit with Kim and that Cohen “lied a lot” but didn’t “lie about one thing.”
“I was actually impressed that he didn’t say, ‘Well, I think there was collusion,’” Trump said. "He said ‘no collusion.’ I was impressed by that.”
Other than that, Trump said Cohen’s performance at the hearing was “pretty shameful.”
Cohen told the committee members he was aware of a Trump adviser’s talks with WikiLeaks about stolen Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 campaign and alleged that as Trump's personal attorney for 10 years he oversaw an array of illicit schemes.
“He is a racist. He is a conman. And he is a cheat,” Cohen testified, setting the tone for the hearing. After outlining numerous alleged misdeeds by Trump, Cohen expressed regret and repeated the refrain, “yet I continued to work for him.”
Fox News’ Alex Pappas contributed to this report.

Fake News Cartoons

White House issues prospective veto of national emergency block

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:08 PM PT — Tuesday, February 26, 2019

A Democrat attempt to block President Trump’s national emergency is virtually dead in the water after the White House issued a preemptive veto threat.
In a statement from the White House, the administration laid out why the declaration is a matter of national security, and said efforts to block it undermine the president’s ability to respond effectively to security threats.
This comes as a resolution makes its way through Congress, and is expected to pass the House and Senate Tuesday. This would be the first veto President Trump has issued since taking office.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are blasting Democrats over their efforts to block the national emergency declaration.
On Tuesday, Utah Congressman Chris Stewart vowed to vote against the bill, because it denies there is an emergency at the border. Stewart said while he doesn’t support President Trump curtailing Congress, he does believe the border crisis does constitute a national emergency. He added, the declaration could have been avoided entirely if Democrats had come to the table beforehand.
“It’s really too bad because there’s a wasted opportunity here., there is a lot of conservatives that have been uncomfortable with this emergency power precedence,” he stated. “If the Democrats had been willing to work with us on something more broad and something that would have applied in future situations, I think they would have had a much more bipartisan response to that.”
However, the congressman did voice the concern future presidents could weaponize national emergencies if Congress doesn’t approve certain legislation.

Donald Trump Jr. lashes out at media, 'Big Tech' for silencing conservative speech

Donald Trump Jr. lashed out at the left, the media and social media platforms for positioning themselves against conservatives and censoring free speech, in a “Tucker Carlson Tonight” interview Tuesday.
“Why is the press standing by as the First Amendment erodes?” Tucker Carlson asked Trump Jr.
“The majority of the press are now left-wing activists,” Trump Jr. told Carlson. “They are not on the side that is being stymied, they’re not on the side that is being oppressed.”
Trump Jr. began the interview by talking about his troubles with Instagram and how many of his followers informed him that social media platforms were censoring their content because of their conservative nature.
“I can do this because I have a big platform. I have a big soapbox, I can get it out there, but some of the little guys, they can’t,” Trump Jr. said. “They don’t have the ability. They end up just taking it.”
Trump Jr. went after “Big Tech” in an op-ed last Friday claiming some companies have been acting in a partisan manner to try preventing President Trump’s reelection.
“Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is showing us that tech companies, too, can manipulate information for partisan ends. Their censorship is increasing at an alarming rate, just in time for them to try to spoil my father’s re-election bid, but we won’t let them get away with it.,” Trump Jr. wrote.
He called the alleged social-media manipulation a “one-way systematic attack on free speech” while talking to Carlson.
“To me, it reads like it’s a trial run for 2020,” Trump Jr. said. “I’m not saying every account is suppressed, but you do it enough. You take off ‘x’ percent of the top. You cut the message in half.”
“I think we have to start pushing back and I think we have to start pushing back hard,” Trump Jr. said. “If we don’t, we’ll never get the chance again.”

Michael Cohen spectacle overshadows Korea summit

It was a classic split-screen moment for the media.
Actually, it called for triple screens.
President Trump had landed in Vietnam for his summit with Kim Jong Un. This second meeting will put to the test whether North Korea actually plans to take any concrete steps toward giving up nuclear weapons, or whether its dictator is merely pursuing a strategy of deflection and delay. At stake: the potential elimination of one of the world's premier nuclear threats, and a possible peace treaty more than six decades after the Korean War armistice.
But that was no match for Michael Cohen.
The president's onetime lawyer had arrived in the Senate yesterday to testify behind closed doors, a prelude to his televised House hearing today.
MSNBC literally had a split-screen shot of Trump getting off the plane in Hanoi and Cohen walking down a Capitol Hill hallway.
CNN had a countdown clock up, 23 hours before his public testimony.
Cohen was already making news as the gist of his planned testimony was provided in advance to major news organizations. And that gave his story, well, a nuclear boost.
Cohen, The New York Times said, "is planning on portraying his onetime client in starkly negative terms when he testifies Wednesday before a House committee, and on describing what he says was Mr. Trump's use of racist language, lies about his wealth and possible criminal conduct."
Cohen, The Washington Post said, "is expected to describe to lawmakers what he views as Trump's 'lies, racism and cheating,' both as president and in private business, and will describe 'personal, behind-the-scenes' interactions he witnessed, a person familiar with the matter said."
And even while the president was halfway around the world, his White House was playing defense on the other story with a statement from Sarah Sanders:
"Disgraced felon Michael Cohen is going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements. Sadly, he will go before Congress this week and we can expect more of the same. It's laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies."
What's fascinating about that statement is that it's the Republican chairman of the Senate Intel committee, Richard Burr, who summoned Cohen. And Robert Mueller is relying on Cohen's accounts as well.
Of course, Cohen's credibility will come under withering assault, since he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. That's part of the reason that Cohen will begin a three-year prison term in May, though he may hope his testimony prompts prosecutors to ask for a sentence reduction.
Cohen's effort at rehabilitating his image is simple: I lied before to protect my client, but I deeply regret it and am so upset by Trump's conduct as president that I'm going to tell all now.
Among his topics, according to the advance leaks: the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, and the president's involvement in hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
His lawyer, Lanny Davis, told the Times that he will "back it up with documents."
But Cohen does not plan to answer questions about other aspects of the Russia investigation to avoid interfering with the Mueller probe.
What the Post described as the hope of Cohen's allies — that "he could become this generation's John Dean" — very much remains to be seen. Dean, unlike Cohen, worked in the White House and was an integral part of Richard Nixon's Watergate coverup.
The third story unfolding on our screens yesterday was Nancy Pelosi's plan for the House to vote on blocking Trump's declaration of a national emergency at the border. So while he's performing on the world stage, he could get whacked here at home for supposedly flouting the Constitution.
By the time the House voted to block Trump 245-182, with 13 Republicans joining the Dems, the party-line tally was a foregone conclusion. There is a chance that the Senate will go along with four Republicans defecting (Thom Tillis said in a Post op-ed yesterday that he'd oppose the national emergency because "conservatives rightfully cried foul when President Barack Obama used executive action to completely bypass Congress"). Still, there undoubtedly wouldn't be enough votes to overturn a veto.
Of course, the summit meeting with Kim hadn't actually begun when these other stories were grabbing ink and airtime. But I can't help thinking that most of the media are more interested in Trump's former fixer and a potential Democratic slapdown than in this president's diplomacy.

9th Circuit gets another Trump-picked judge, after White House bypasses consultation with Dems

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Trump's nominee to be a judge on the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a party-line vote -- and, in a historic snub, the White House ignored the input of the judge's two Democratic home-state senators in the process.
The aggressive and unprecedented move to bypass the traditional "blue slip" consultation process and plow ahead with the confirmation comes as the Trump administration seeks to systematically erode left-wing dominance on the key appellate court, which Trump has called "disgraceful" and politically biased.
With a sprawling purview representing nine Western states, the appellate court has long been a thorn in the side of the Trump White House, with rulings against his travel ban policy and limits on funding to "sanctuary cities." A lawsuit is currently pending before the 9th Circuit concerning Trump's emergency declaration over border security -- and Trump had sarcastically predicted that Democrats would purposefully file suit in the San Francisco-based appellate court to improve their odds.
The new 9th Circuit judge, Seattle attorney Eric Miller, was confirmed 53-46. Miller was one the 51 federal judicial nominees left over from the previous Congress whom the White House re-nominated last month.
Miller, currently the appellate chairman of the high-powered law firm Perkins Coie, will replace Judge Richard Tallman, a Bill Clinton appointee who assumed senior status March 2018. Miller is the fifth former clerk to Associate Justice Clarence Thomas to be nominated by Trump to a federal appellate court, including embattled D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Neomi Rao.
Miller represented the government before the Supreme Court when he served from 2007 to 2012 as an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States. He was also Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with, from left, Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., McConnell, John Thune, R-S.D., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, speakING to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Among those objecting to Miller's nomination were Washington State's two Democratic senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray. Aides say Miller's confirmation marks the first time the Senate has strayed from tradition and confirmed a judicial nominee over the dissent of both home-state senators.
“This is wrong. It is a dangerous road for the Senate to go down,” Murray said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “Confirming this 9th Circuit court nominee without the consent or true input of both home-state senators, and after a sham hearing, would be a dangerous first for this Senate.”
Miller was nominated last year but faced opposition from Democrats, in part over his views on issues of tribal sovereignty.
The White House has previously signaled it will also plow ahead with other 9th Circuit nominations in other states without using the "blue slip" consultation process. The Sacramento Bee reported last year that White House officials had been negotiating with California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris about 9th Circuit appointments, but the dialogue collapsed, and the White House proceeded to announce three nominees over their objections.
Those nominees -- Patrick Bumatay, Daniel Collins and Kenneth Kiyul Lee (all from the Golden State, and reportedly all members of the conservative Federalist Society) -- have yet to be confirmed.
GOP critics have branded the court the “Nutty 9th,” in part because many of its rulings have been overturned by the Supreme Court.
Last November, Chief Justice John Roberts openly disputed Trump's comments that the nation has "Obama judges" and partisan hacks on the courts. The move marked a highly unusual challenge to the White House from a sitting Supreme Court justice, and prompted some observers to accuse Roberts of naivete.
“What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,” Roberts said in the head-turning statement.
But Trump, invoking the 9th Circuit, fired back immediately.
“Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country,” Trump tweeted.
“It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an ‘independent judiciary,’ but if it is why are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned,” Trump continued. “Please study the numbers, they are shocking. We need protection and security - these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise!”