The president seemed to blindside his senior staff members on Thursday when he popped in the White House press briefing room to tell reporters that there would soon be an important announcement about North Korea.
That announcement ended up being that the president had accepted an invitation to personally meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. This meeting — pending it actually successfully taking place — will come in a context of continued pressure in the North Korean relationship with the United States going both directions.
The North Koreans have claimed an ability to strike the United States mainland, while Trump has spent a significant amount of time carrying on with angry rhetoric against the North Koreans, asserting at one point that he would see to North Korea’s annihilation if he felt it fitting.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was faced with questions about Trump’s planned meeting with the North Korean leader at the Friday White House press conference, refusing to answer questions about the specifics of the meeting — like the time and place — but insisting that it fits in a broader, intentional foreign policy plan on the part of the president.
As she put it:
‘The president is hopeful that we can make some continued progress. Look, what we know is that the maximum pressure campaign has clearly been effective. We know that it has put a tremendous amount of pressure on North Korea and they have made some major promises. They’ve made promises to de-nuclearize. They’ve made promises to stop nuclear and missile testing, and they’ve recognized that regular military exercises between the U.S. and its ally South Korea will continue.
Sanders added a message to the previous going line about the meeting, saying:
‘We’re not going to have this meeting take place until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea.’
Her message on that front stands in apparent contrast to earlier messages about the meeting taking place by May of this year.
She also addressed questions about the apparent abruptness with which the president accepted the invitation from the North Koreans, insisting that he didn’t actually blindside anyone.
As she put it:
‘This has been part of an ongoing campaign that’s been going for over a year, and just because some of the individuals that may regularly leak to the press weren’t involved in the conversation doesn’t mean that the appropriate parties that lead those agencies were not in the room and not part of that discussion.’
Individuals who very recently shot down the idea of negotiations with the North Koreans include not just lower level staffers, however, but officials as high ranking as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Of Tillerson in specific, Sanders commented:
‘The Secretary of State’s deputy was in the room at the time that these conversations went on, so it’s absurd to pretend like they weren’t part of this process and haven’t been part of this process all along.’
Tillerson, who has himself been on seemingly rough terms with the president in the past, attempted to make up for the discrepancy between his remarks and reality by saying that he was discrediting the idea of negotiations and all Trump accepted is an invitation for a “talk.”
The difference between those terms, however, is hardly set in stone.
Check out video of the Friday White House press conference below.
Featured Image via Screenshot from the Video
