"South Korea’s foreign minister on US role in denuclearizing North Korea" PBS NewsHour 5/20/2021
Excerpt
SUMMARY: President Joe Biden is expected to meet Friday with South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. The two leaders are at very different points of their terms. Biden newly-elected, and Moon in his final year. They are expected to discuss progress on North Korea, and discuss tense U.S.- China relations. Amna Nawaz gets the details from South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong.
SUMMARY: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including whether Americans are ready for the mounting coronavirus crisis, why the U.S. government wasn’t better prepared for the pandemic, the significance of the $2.2 trillion economic relief package and the status of the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): As the days now become weeks, to help make sense of where we are, the analysis of Brooks and Marcus.
That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. Mark Shields is away.
Hello to both of you.
We are keeping you distant for your safety.
David, to you first.
The U.S. is now leading the world. We have surpassed every other country in COVID-19 cases. The experts say it's just going to get worse because of early missed opportunities. Do you think Americans are ready for what's coming?
David Brooks, New York Times: Well, they have been ready so far. I think the reaction, people are taking it seriously. They are doing the distancing. I have been on Zoom calls with thousands of people this week, it seems.
And people are volunteering to help each other out in ways that are safe. And so I have been really impressed by the American public's reaction.
The government, more of a mixed bag. Obviously, President Trump pooh-poohed it for too long, and that cost us vital weeks. But he wasn't alone. The CDC messed up the tests. The FDA regulations were — got in the way.
Political scientists have been talking for years about the decay of our governing institutions, too much politics, too much regulation, not enough room to maneuver for the managers. And that seems to all be coming true.
And so we have sort of seen an institutional failure from the White House on down.
Judy Woodruff: Ruth, what about that? What about the American people and the institutions?
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post: Well, the American people are one thing, and the institutions are quite another, as David suggests.
The fact of the matter is, is that, if the American people aren't prepared, it's because their leaders, and primarily President Trump, has failed to prepare them for what is coming.
And he's failed to prepare them on a number — he's [Trump] failed to prepare the country in terms of the material and the readiness that we need to have, and he's failed to prepare them with a clear and consistent message about how we are going to defeat what he calls this invisible virus and this invisible killer.
While we were just on — while the show was on, he was on television in his nightly self-congratulatory moment, and he said — was complaining about the governor of Michigan, as she was on your air, and complaining about the governor of Washington, and saying he had told Mike Pence, if they're not nice to you, don't call them. If they don't treat you good, don't call them.
That is not Presidential. That is petty and beneath what the country deserves and needs at this point.
Judy Woodruff: David, what about President Trump's leadership now?
David Brooks: Yes, I think the word I would lead is inconstant, most of all.
We're used to his self-focus. We're used to the narcissism. We're used to this, I want people to love me all the time.
But it's extremely unnerving in a time like this, when the President says we don't need ventilators one hour, and says we desperately need them the next hour. That is just a nerve-jangling problem.
The irony is that, if somebody like Steve Bannon had been in the White House, he saw this problem early. It sort of filtered into his ideological priors. The intelligence community saw this problem early.
It was the President doing what he thought would serve him best for his reelection that caused him to talk this down for so long. And when he gets a bad press, like about General Motors, a story that suggests he's dragging his feet, then he reacts to that.
So he's reacting to the latest bit of bad press, which just leads to this — this pattern of inconstancy.
Judy Woodruff: So, Ruth, we do have Congress passing, agreeing — and the President's now signed it — this $2.2 trillion, historic amount of money, supposed to go directly to aid Americans who are hurt by the response to this — to this pandemic.
How much help do you think it's going to make?
Ruth Marcus: It's going to make a lot of help.
This is a — in a bad time, this was a good moment. There were problems along the way. There were disagreements along the way. But the fact that Congress could pass this quickly a package of this amazing magnitude, $2.2 trillion — we have now spent almost $3 trillion — to get agreement, these guys can't even rename a post office.
And they managed to do this. That's really important.
There's two things that are critical, though. One is to make sure that this money that's been allocated, particularly the money to small businesses, and even more than that, the money to individuals to get them through, that has to — in order to be effective, that has to get out the door as quickly as humanly possible.
And that's going to be a phenomenon of oversight and execution that is up to the executive branch. And we will see if they're up to that task. I really hope they are.
The second thing is that, while this is an enormous sum of money, it actually may not be sufficient. It's enough to get people through the next several — next couple months. But we may need to dig into the national pockets and the national — scrounge for the change in the national couch cushions, and come up with more, because the President likes to pretend that this is going to be all over by Easter or at least in some counties over by Easter.
That's just not reality-based.
Judy Woodruff: Yes, we are starting to hear a lot more money's going to be needed.
But, David, in terms of this first tranche, or whatever you want to call it, how much difference do you think it's going to make?
David Brooks: Oh, it'll make a difference. It's a lot of money. We have a $14 trillion economy or so, and so $2 trillion is a lot of money.
I — personally, I applaud them for getting it done. I think, just as Ruth said, to see Congress do anything is impressive. I think they took the wrong strategy. The United Kingdom and Denmark and some other countries decided what's most important is to keep people employed.
And so they gave money to employers to keep people on the payroll. And that does a lot of things. It keeps the firms intact. It keeps people feeling like, I have a job, even if they have to stay home.
We went the unemployment insurance route, which was to get people out of their workplace. Then we will subsidize them. The problem is, once you're off — out of the labor market, for some people, it's hard to get back in.
And I worry about the organizations, the institutions of these small businesses. If suddenly they sort of go away for a time, how many of them are going to come back? How many of the nonprofits are going to come back? And so I'm glad we're doing it. I wish we had tried a different strategy.
Judy Woodruff: How much do you worry about that, Ruth?
Ruth Marcus: Well, I worry that, if we were going to do that, we would have needed to do it earlier, because so many of these places have already laid people off, and the imperative is to get money to them quickly.
But I don't disagree that might have been a better strategy.
The thing that I worry about more in the immediate term is also making sure — just want to go back to this supply chain question and the move that the President made today to invoke the Defense Production Act, because these are things that also are imperative to have done months ago.
We should have been understanding that there was going to need to be a need for ventilators, that we should have started — whether you invoke the Defense Production Act, or you do it another way, to start making sure that those masks and those ventilators are in the chain and ready to go and ready to be supplied.
And we need — David talked about the inconstancy of the message. We need a constant and rational message from the President, but we also need one person in charge of making sure that all of these — as we are sending out these very needed checks to businesses and millions of people, we also need to be deploying these supplies to the hospitals and the health care workers, because, if we don't get this under control, we're just going to keep hemorrhaging money while this virus just devastates us.
Judy Woodruff: And you do, David, hear the criticism that, because this wasn't done, organized earlier, people are going to die.
David Brooks: Yes, that seems absolutely true.
And it's simple. Overreact. There has not been a moment where somebody has overreacted. Everything that seems like an overreaction is the right reaction. There was a University of Pennsylvania study that said, even if we cut the infection rate by 95 percent from — by social distancing, we're still going to need 960,000 people going into an intensive care ward.
That's a lot of ventilators. That's a lot of masks. That's a lot of equipment.
And so erring on the side of too much is probably still too little. And so that should — everybody's instinct should be that way.
Judy Woodruff: And, Ruth, back to what David was saying about, the President keeps talking about getting — at least getting some people back to work by Easter, hoping that some parts of the country can go back to business as usual.
Every expert you hear, however, says that would be crazy, it would — it's dangerous. You can't do that. I heard Bill Gates last night on CNN saying it can't be a county-by-county approach.
What happens if this is lifted too soon?
Ruth Marcus: Well, I thought that the President's statement that he wanted to see the church pews packed on Easter, because he said it was a beautiful day, was possibly the single most irresponsible statement ever made by an American President in history.
That is an outrage. It is dangerous that.
And the problem with the — even if we were packing church pews in individual counties, you can't — this is America. We don't build walls around counties. We don't — we have known unknowns, as Donald Rumsfeld used to say. The known unknown here is, where is the virus?
If we had the tests, and we could test — do widespread testing, we would know where the virus is, and we might be able to know where it's easier to lift restrictions.
But because we haven't — didn't prepare for the tests, we don't know where the virus is. And so lifting it in this county or that county because it doesn't seem to have a lot of illness right now is just a very, very dangerous move.
And, by the way, even when we lift restrictions, when we think it's safe to lift restrictions, we can't just open up the floodgates and tell everybody to go start shaking hands, and…
Judy Woodruff: Right.
Ruth Marcus: … getting smashed together in church pews again.
We have to do it intelligently and slowly, or we're going to find ourselves in this Groundhog Day of pandemic.
Judy Woodruff: David, how much — how concerned are you about that?
David Brooks: I don't think — one of the nice things is, (A) Donald Trump doesn't control a lot of this. [B] This is done on the state level. And we're going to see the virtues and the vices of our federal system.
And I think he is surrounded — I don't take him always that literally. I think some of the statements are — cause extreme harm, but he doesn't actually run a lot of the things, because people are just going to take control around him.
And we know how this ends up. We have seen successful countries, in Asia particularly. And it ends up, as Ruth said, when we have the tests, and when we use sophisticated high technology to trace the actual individuals who have the infection, we trace their networks, we trace their movements.
It's possible to do this with the right level of execution. We did not have the advantage of having the SARS system, so we don't yet have the — sort of the infrastructure to do that. But, eventually, presumably, we're going to get it.
SUMMARY: As U.S. cases of COVID-19 rise, officials are stepping up efforts to control the outbreak's spread. Communities across the country are bracing for disruption, with many schools closing or holding remote classes. Also, two GOP congressmen who were with President Trump recently are self-quarantining after a conference attendee with whom they met tested positive for the virus. Amna Nawaz reports.
SUMMARY: Monday was a tumultuous day in the global battle against coronavirus. Italy’s government banned travel nationwide after new spikes in infections and fatalities. Meanwhile, U.S. stocks had their worst day in over a decade. Special correspondent Christopher Livesay reports from Rome, and Judy Woodruff talks to Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics and Ben Mutzabaugh of air travel website The Points Guy.
SUMMARY: Amid the growing U.S. coronavirus outbreak, some experts have criticized the way President Trump, his team and top public health officials are communicating information to the public. For example, Trump made inaccurate statements Friday about the availability of virus tests. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.
SUMMARY: The impact of the novel coronavirus in the U.S. is deepening. On Tuesday, new cancellations, closures and quarantines were announced and President Trump and lawmakers huddled about potential measures to soften the crisis’ economic impact -- but the stock market rallied back from Monday’s major losses. Amna Nawaz reports and Lisa Desjardins and Yamiche Alcindor join Judy Woodruff to discuss.
SUMMARY: A growing number of U.S. schools, including several colleges and universities, are shutting their doors to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Although only a small fraction of public elementary and high schools have closed, more than 430,000 students are affected already. John Yang talks to Michelle Reid, superintendent of Washington state’s Northshore School District, about the decision to close.
SUMMARY: In the United Kingdom, novel coronavirus has killed six people as of Tuesday, with another 370 infected and quarantined. The British government is watching how the illness spread quickly and pervasively in Italy, fearing the same could happen in the UK. But as special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports, the current attitude among the British is very much to keep calm and carry on.
SUMMARY: The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a global pandemic. The illness has infected about 120,000 people worldwide and claimed 4,400 lives, and public health officials both within the U.S. and abroad are warning that the crisis will get worse. Amna Nawaz reports, and Judy Woodruff talks to WHO’s Dr. Margaret Harris about how people should be preparing.
SUMMARY: As the U.S. novel coronavirus outbreak worsens, colleges and universities around the country are asking students to stay off campus -- and essentially shutting down. Though some classes are migrating online, the closures may still represent a hardship for students who rely on school for housing, meals and other services. Amna Nawaz talks to James Ryan, president of the University of Virginia.
SUMMARY: The economic consequences of the novel coronavirus pandemic are growing even more severe. Stocks logged their worst day of trading since the 1987 market crash, cancellations and closures rippled across the globe and the fallout from President Trump’s decision to ban most travel from Europe became evident. Nick Schifrin reports and Charles Schwab’s Liz Ann Sonders joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.
SUMMARY: On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are working on a multi-billion dollar novel coronavirus aid package to help the Americans hit hardest by the pandemic. They, along with Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, also weighed in on President Trump’s response to the crisis. Lisa Desjardins reports and joins Nick Schifrin, Yamiche Alcindor and Judy Woodruff to discuss.
SUMMARY: Friday was another day of mass closings and cancellations as schools, sports and travel shut down amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. President Trump also declared a national emergency to increase funding for a federal response, and he appears to have a deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for related legislation. Amna Nawaz reports and Lisa Desjardins and Yamiche Alcindor join Judy Woodruff.
SUMMARY: President Trump has declared the pandemic of novel coronavirus a national emergency, allowing him to direct additional funds toward the federal government’s outbreak response. Will it mean faster virus testing and more ventilators? Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, and The New York Times’ Dr. Sheri Fink join Judy Woodruff to discuss.
SUMMARY: South Korea’s government is spending nearly $10 billion to fight novel coronavirus, which has infected nearly 8,000 people there. But the effort to contain the illness requires more than just money -- entire communities must come together, sharing information, volunteering at testing centers and limiting consumption of vital medical supplies. Bruce Harrison of Feature Story News reports.
SUMMARY: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has deployed the National Guard and created a one-mile containment zone around the town of New Rochelle, just north of New York City, where at least 158 cases of COVID-19 have been reported. And on Friday, the state launched its first drive-thru mobile testing facility in the region. NewsHour Weekend's Christopher Booker has more.
SUMMARY: With businesses shuttering, professional sports leagues suspending their seasons and widespread travel restrictions initiated around the world, the economic fallout from the new coronavirus outbreak may continue for months. Vijay Vaitheeswaran, U.S.business editor for The Economist, joins Hari Sreenivasan for more on the financial impact of the virus.
SUMMARY: A week after Italy’s government began locking down the country due to the coronavirus outbreak, new cases are emerging as the death toll climbs. The scenario is overwhelming a medical system already reeling from an influx of patients. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Chris Livesay joins Hari Sreenivasan from Rome with updates on the coronavirus outbreak in Italy.
SUMMARY: The response to the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. is changing on an almost hourly basis. But as health care workers face a volley of new challenges amid an American populace wary of the global pandemic, there has been an increase in testing and guidelines to consider. Caroline Chen, a ProPublica reporter who is covering the outbreak, joins Hari Sreenivasan with more.
SUMMARY: To help contain transmission of coronavirus, the CDC has issued guidelines for “social distancing.” But as the virus continues to spread, many more questions on when to close schools, how to seek day-to-day healthcare and the extent of the outbreak in the coming weeks remain unanswered. Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, joins Hari Sreenivasan with more.
SUMMARY: Questions of diversity and inclusion among nominees still lingered at the Oscars on Sunday night -- but still, the Academy’s choice for the best picture of the year, “Parasite,” was a big deal. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times joins Amna Nawaz to discuss the significance of that pick, the first non-English language film to receive the honor, for Asian Americans in the entertainment industry.
SUMMARY: A new joint agreement signed by leaders of North and South Korea marked their most significant progress toward peace to date. Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in pledged a "new era," with Kim agreeing to dismantle his main missile testing site, as well as his main nuclear weapons complex -- with conditions. Yamiche Alcindor talks with Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation and Jenny Town of 38 North.
SUMMARY: South Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Lim Sung-nam sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss what he sees as the foundations of North Korea’s possible denuclearization and next steps in the process.
SUMMARY: Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un met for the first time at a resort off Singapore's coast, the first time a U.S. President has been face-to-face with a leader of North Korea. Nick Schifrin joins Judy Woodruff from on the ground in Singapore.
SUMMARY: In Singapore, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered optimism that a Tuesday summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would set conditions "for future, productive talks." Nick Schifrin joins Judy Woodruff from on the ground in Singapore to offer a preview of the meeting and what’s at stake.
SUMMARY: The road to Tuesday's summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore has been long and dangerous, littered with fraught diplomacy, broken agreements, and threats of war. Nick Schifrin looks back at how we got here.
SUMMARY: President Trump and Kim Jong Un held a whirlwind summit in Singapore and set lofty goals, but provided few details on how to achieve them. From Singapore, Nick Schifrin joins Judy Woodruff to outline the agreement and discuss whether each side got what they wanted.
SUMMARY: President Trump deserves credit for turning relations with North Korea around, says Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) but more work needs to be done and more nuance is needed on the issue of the future of military exercises with South Korea. Risch joins Judy Woodruff to discuss first steps in North Korea diplomacy, the issue of human rights, plus Trump pulling the U.S. out of the G-7 joint communique.
SUMMARY: Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md) says that he's pleased that President Trump used diplomacy to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but now it's necessary to see North Korea implement changes to show it's serious about eliminating its nuclear weapons program. Cardin joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the issue of human rights and Trump’s controversial treatment of allies at the G-7.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including President Trump calling off his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the outcome of Tuesday’s primaries for Democrats, and the effects of the President stirring controversy with claims of FBI spying on his campaign.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): Now back to the political news of this week with the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome to you both.
So, let’s talk first about this on-again/off-again summit with the North Korean leader.
David, it came about very quickly. It seemed to spring out of the President’s mind on his own. We didn’t — a lot of people were skeptical it was ever going to happen. It’s off again, but the President said today, maybe it’s not off.
What do you make of his diplomacy?
David Brooks, New York Times: When I went to buy my first car, somebody gave me advice. You have got to walk out. Walk out.
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
David Brooks: Walk out.
And I never — I’m not that kind of guy, so I didn’t walk out. But Donald Trump sort of walked out. And so he does everything in public. And he exerts pressure, he flatters, he threatens war. He does everything in public.
And so I sort of sympathize with the idea to see if there can be some breakthrough with North Korea. And I don’t blame him for going in and going out, trying to exert whatever pressure he can.
The problem is, it’s not real diplomacy. In real diplomacy, you have your sherpas, your lower-level people sort of build up some sense of agreements. You gather your allies. You don’t burn them with trade deals, the Chinese just South Koreans. You gather — and you exert real pressure.
But Donald Trump is a lone wolf, and so he’s doing it all on his own, basically, without allies, without too much help from the U.S. government, and it’s all by tweet and publicity.
And so I’m skeptical that you can get a real breakthrough without a full, stacked diplomatic and military effort, but — or at least sort of threats and pressure. But I don’t totally blame him for trying. Or, frankly, I don’t blame him for going in and out.
Anything that can dislodge something that’s stuck.
Judy Woodruff: How do you size this up?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: Well, Judy, it’s been 65 years since President Eisenhower on his promise to go to Korea negotiated a truce between North Korea and South Korea.
Since then, we have had 10 Presidents of both parties, five Democrats, five Republicans. With varying degrees of commitment and intensity, they have all tried to deal with resolving Korea. They have spent time. They have used learned professionals, wise academics, businessmen who know, and business persons who know the area.
And even after that, there are no major breakthroughs that’s happened. And Donald Trump, with no preparation, no knowledge, no background — I agree with David. I cheered the hope — and it was only a hope — that we might have a breakthrough.
But the idea that this was going to happen, and that somehow Kim Jong-un, who has gotten now global respect because he’s got nuclear arms, was just going to say, well, that’s it, thank you so much, you know, I think, was unrealistic.
Now, the fact that Secretary Mattis says that there’s a possibility that the summit will occur, that gives me pause. I mean, I give a lot more credence to what Secretary Mattis says than I do to the White House.
Judy Woodruff: The President clearly — or seems, David, to believe that unpredictability can pay off sometimes.
David Brooks: Well, sometimes, it can.
If we got a crazy person who is President, you may as well take advantage. But, as I say, why should they give up nuclear weapons? They have seen the Libya example and they saw what happened to Gadhafi.
The only — but at some point in history, and I don’t know if it will be in our lifetimes, they will say, we would rather have a middle-class lifestyle. We would rather have what they have in South Korea. I think, eventually, somebody is going to make that call. I don’t know if it will be this guy, or his son, or grandson, or whatever.
But, eventually, that’s going to happen. So, as long as we can keep knocking on the door, that seems fine. And as long as we don’t disrupt our allies in the area, which we seem to have terrified the South Koreans…
Mark Shields: And the Japanese.
David Brooks: And the Japanese — then the door should always be open, the pressure should always be on.
But sometimes you don’t just have any good solutions. And that’s why we have had 10 Presidents without much progress.
Mark Shields: Yes, that’s it.
This isn’t the city council in Atlantic City or the zoning commission, where you’re trying to get a deal for the casino and better parking or a large parking lot or to invoke eminent domain on your behalf.
This is really — really — significance. And it’s the difference between braggadocio and style and flash and substance. And if you look at everybody — I mean, John Kennedy, who was far more a student of foreign affairs than Donald Trump, at his first encounter with Khrushchev came away humbled, came away — and, in retrospect, contributed, historians and I think many in the Kennedy administration agree, to the emboldened Soviet Union in both Berlin and in Cuba.
So these don’t come without some cost and without some price and especially, as David pointed out, the rupture with our allies.
SUMMARY: Days after a historic summit, there are signs of progress from both North and South Korea. Pyongyang announced it will re-sync its time zone with South Korea's starting Saturday, while the South said it will remove the loudspeakers that blast propaganda into the North. John Yang reports on the first steps both sides seem to be taking, and what U.S. officials are saying about the American role.
SUMMARY: Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea since the Korean War 65 years ago. The official talks focused heavily on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. President Moon Jae-in said that he and Kim shared the goal of ridding “the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons through complete denuclearization." Judy Woodruff reports.
SUMMARY: The meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas along the heavily fortified border marked a day of diplomacy after months of war talk. Judy Woodruff talks to former State Department official Frank Jannuzi, and Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about the significance of the meeting and how it sets up the summit between Kim Jong Un and President Trump.
SUMMARY: At a historic meeting on Friday, North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will discuss the North's nuclear program, begin talks on officially ending the Korean War after 65 years, and lay the groundwork for a meeting between Kim and President Trump later this spring. Special correspondent Katrina Yu reports.
SUMMARY: CIA director and secretary of state-designate Mike Pompeo met secretly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over Easter weekend, President Trump confirmed on Wednesday. At his recent confirmation hearing, Pompeo spoke hopefully about the upcoming Trump-Kim summit, never mentioning in public or behind closed doors that he had personally already met with Kim. William Brangham reports.
SUMMARY: President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met reporters at Mar-a-Lago Wednesday evening, where Trump said that he would be doing everything possible to make his anticipated meeting with the leader of North Korea "a worldwide success." Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the President’s remarks and the relationship between Trump and Abe.
SUMMARY: There’s no doubt that President Trump and Kim Jong Un intend to meet, said Victoria Coates, special assistant to the President, who noted that the tone coming out of North Korea is making the Trump administration “very hopeful.” Coates joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the meeting between CIA Director Mike Pompeo and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the potential for denuclearization and more.
SUMMARY: The leaders of China and North Korea held an unofficial summit this week, waiting until Wednesday to announce it to the world. Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping came face-to-face for the first time in Beijing, Kim first venture abroad since he became North Korea's supreme leader in 2011. Judy Woodruff reports on how both countries have characterized the visit.
SUMMARY: Why did North Korean leader Kim Jong Un go to China, and what impact will that visit have on its nuclear standoff with the U.S.? Judy Woodruff gets two views from Michael Pillsbury an adviser to the Trump administration, and Michael Green a former National Security Council staff member.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the abrupt announcement that President Trump intends to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the tariffs imposed on imported steel and aluminum and a lawsuit against the President by actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): And now to the analysis of Shields and Parker. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker. David Brooks is away this week.
And welcome to both of you. Happy Friday.
Mark, two bold strokes by the President this week.
Let’s start with the one that we led the program with tonight, North Korea. Surprised, I think, a lot of people by saying he will meet, as long as North Korea meets certain conditions. Was this the right move?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: We will find out if it was the right move, Judy. It was a bold move. Make no mistake about it. And it disarmed his critics who had accused him of being — bellicose language, which was provable, and that he was risking the brink of war almost, and especially gratuitously belittling the North Korean leadership.
Judy Woodruff: Little rocket man.
Mark Shields: Little rocket man.
And then, miraculously, the North Korean — seemingly miraculously — said, I’m willing to negotiate and consider the possibility of removing my nuclear capability, which I think nobody above the I.Q. of room temperature believes.
But, at the same time, the problem with North Korea in the past has not been their willingness to meet or to negotiate or to agree. It’s just that North Korea has never kept its word. But the President certainly has taken a bold act. And it’s brought us back from the brink of war. And I think there’s an audible sigh of relief.
Judy Woodruff: Smart move, Kathleen?
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post: I just see it as very, very risky.
And it’s risky because, on the one hand, he’s giving Kim Jong-un this legitimacy that he has for so long wanted. You know, when the President of the United States says something, it’s always important, everybody listens, and when he does something, it’s always important. The markets go up and down when he opens his mouth.
When he — he can cause wars with his words. And when he now says he’s going to meet with North Korea, he is setting himself up for all sorts of problems, potential problems. But he’s also, because he’s Donald Trump, has lots of wiggle room to pull out of it at the last minute if he decides the circumstances aren’t right.
We don’t know exactly what those are. And it’s all been just odd, I think, to have had these — his messaging about what North Korea’s willing to do came from the South Koreans, who then also were the ones to present…
Judy Woodruff: They’re the ones who announced it.
Kathleen Parker: Who announced it in front of the White House.
And I was taken aback by that. I thought, well, is he out? Did he have a dinner date, so that somebody else had to talk about it? And at what point is Trump going to talk to the country about this very, very important and significant move?
Judy Woodruff: And, in fact, Mark, it was announced abruptly. The South Korean official who was at the White House was there.
He was going to meet with President Trump today. Yesterday, the President, we are told, it’s been reported that he heard he was in the White House, went to see him. The President stuck his head into the press room and said, we’re going to have an announcement about — that you will want to pay attention to.
So the way it was announced, the way it was handled raises some questions.
Mark Shields: It does raise questions, Judy. But the questions have been raised and continue to be raised.
As one Republican explained to me, you have to understand that every day is a new reality show. And there’s no continuity to this Presidency. And it’s winning the day. It’s changing the conversation. He’s changed the conversation.
What was the conversation? Gary Cohn, his economic adviser, was quitting because of his trade policy. What was the conversation? Stormy Daniels, the porn actress with whom the President allegedly had — or at least President’s people paid $130,000 to just before the election, was going to go public.
The disarray in the White House, that — you name it, Republican civil war, if not — civil war is strong, but at least Republican strife over his trade policy. This knocked it all off the front pages.
I did notice the South Korean National Security Adviser had mastered one of the great secrets of dealing with Donald Trump was, he began, continued and ended the entire conversation by praising President Trump for the meeting, that it was all due to his leadership, his strong, principled positions.
And so, you know, this worked for Donald Trump. It got the other bad stories away for at least 24 hours.
Judy Woodruff: Kathleen, how much attention should we be paying to the theatrics of this, the orchestration of it? How much do we learn by looking at that?
Kathleen Parker: Well, I don’t know that we learn anything from the theatrics, because it’s become sort of a template of his.
And you do realize you’re watching a reality show. But there are other troubling aspects of this. And that includes the fact that we really have no representation in that part of the world. We have no ambassador to South Korea.
And our special representative to North Korea has just left the building with mostly, probably, I’m not sure, but I think because of a disagreement with Trump about how he was — about his bellicosity.
But this fellow, Joseph Yun, was tending toward having these talks. And then to add to that we don’t have any real diplomatic involvement. Rex -- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson -- is speaking publicly about how we’re nowhere close to talking to North Korea, and within the same news cycle, the President is making this announcement or accepting this invitation.
SUMMARY: Seventeen-year-old American snowboarder Chloe Kim dazzled the 2018 Winter Olympics with her aerial acrobatics and athletic spins, winning a gold medal on Monday. Jeffrey Brown talks with Eddie Pells of the Associated Press about Kim, the daughter of South Korean immigrants, as well as several other snowboarding standouts in Pyeongchang.
General Motors will close one of its four assembly plants in South Korea in May. It did not say it was moving production to Detroit instead, as President Trump claimed.
“That was not part of the announcement,” GM spokesman Patrick Morrissey said in a phone interview with FactCheck.org.
A GM Korea press release announcing the closure said that the Gunsan plant has been underused for years, “making continued operations unsustainable.” But the press release also said the company presented stakeholders with “a concrete plan to stay in the country and turn the business around” to save jobs.
However, during a meeting on trade held at the White House with the president’s cabinet and some members of Congress, Trump said that the company was relocating.
Trump, Feb 13: One thing I just — I do want to tell you, we just got this notice. General Motors in Korea announces the first step in necessary restructuring. They’re going to — GM Korea company announced today that it will cease production and close its Gunsan plant in May of 2018, and they’re going to move back to Detroit.
You don’t hear these things, except for the fact that Trump became President. Believe me, you wouldn’t be hearing that. So they’re moving back from Korea to Detroit. They’re moving.
The President got the closure part right, but there was nothing in the company’s official statement about “moving back” to the Motor City.
“There could be broader global implications,” as a result of closing the plant, Morrissey, a GM spokesman, told us by phone. But as for a planned move to Detroit? “That was not part of the announcement,” he said.
Kristin Dziczek, head of the Industry, Labor & Economics Group at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was more direct.
“There is no new plant or new production in Detroit” as a result of this, Dziczek told us in an interview. She tweeted similar statements contradicting the president, who also wrongly said that Fiat Chrysler was moving a manufacturing plant from Mexico to Michigan.
In its Feb 12 press release, GM Korea said “it will cease production and close its Gunsan plant by the end of May 2018” because the “facility has been increasingly underutilized, running at about 20 percent of capacity over the past three years, making continued operations unsustainable.”
“This announcement occurs after a careful review of the company’s operations, which have sustained significant losses for the past several years,” the company said.
Dziczek noted that fewer people are buying the Chevy Cruze, which is one of two cars made at the Gunsan plant. So there’s really no need for more capacity in the U.S., where Cruzes are already made in Lordstown, Ohio, she explained.
Contrary to Trump’s claim of a move to Detroit, the company will still have three other assembly plants in South Korea. And the company promised to present stakeholders with a “concrete plan to stay in the country and turn the business around.”
“The proposal includes significant product-related investments in South Korea and would preserve thousands of jobs,” its press release said.
The company said that it will make a decision on its next steps by the end of February.
SUMMARY: The Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, come at a particularly tense moment in the region. But there's also a lot of excitement around the Games themselves. John Yang talks to Christine Brennan of USA Today about what and who to watch, the Russian doping scandal, and how one athlete has spoken out against Vice President Mike Pence leading the American delegation.
SUMMARY: Fireworks opened the 2018 Olympic Games, but competed for attention with a diplomatic spectacle. The leaders of South Korea and North Korea showed off a historic handshake, while Vice President Mike Pence kept his distance, underscoring apparent divisions between Washington and Seoul. John Yang gets two views from former State Department officials Anthony Ruggiero and Frank Jannuzi.
SUMMARY: For the first time in more than two years, officials from the two Koreas sat for high-level, closed-door talks. The two sides agreed to hold future military talks to ease border tensions and the North pledged to send a delegation to next month's Winter Olympic Games. Judy Woodruff discusses the developments with former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Kathleen Stephens.
SUMMARY: South Korea conducted more military drills Tuesday, the latest to deter North Korea after its nuclear test on Sunday. But there are growing concerns about U.S.-South Korea relations, as President Trump pushes South Korea to get tougher, threatening a trade deal and potentially driving a wedge between the two allies. William Brangham reports on the tensions rising with the Korean peninsula.
SUMMARY: North Korea launched its most powerful nuclear test yet, the country’s fifth since 2006 and its second this year. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports on the diplomatic fallout and Judy Woodruff talks to former State Department official Greg Thielmann and former National Security Council official Gary Samore about the country’s nuclear capabilities and the global implications.
