Art of the Spiel: Will Trump Negotiate a Good Deal with North Korea?

For all we know, this may actually happen.

The only reason why Kim is willing to hold this unprecedented meeting with Trump is that he believes he can pull a fast one on him (and he has good reason to think so).

However, what I'd really want to know is why he thinks that this is enough. Because getting Trump to go along with you seems to be fairly easy so long as you push the right buttons (e.g. tell him he has big manly hands or that he's doing a real bang-up job at the Oval Office). But then how is he going to get Congress to go along with it? Especially with the midterm elections threatening Republicans' control of the House and the Senate, since there is no way Democrats are going to go along with anything Trump suggests.

The answer is bullying.

Here's what I mean by that and I'll explain it by describing how I think things are going to go down:

First, Trump and Kim are going to meet in Trump's typical unorthodox (i.e. disorganized) fashion and they're going to reach some kind of settlement to halt North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. Now, Trump is likely to insist on permanent on-site verification, while Kim is probably going to try and weasel his way out of it by offering to cease rocket testings and nuclear weapons research immediately and indefinitely, while also promising assurances of proper implementation of denuclearization protocols. The way Kim will seal the deal is by allowing the US government to conduct periodic inspections. Trump will likely agree to those concessions if only to bolster his ego by claiming he reached "the best deal ever" with North Korea.

Following that, both Republicans and Democrats are going to come out strongly against it, rightly criticizing it as a sham deal that could be easily manipulated by the North Korean government. Trump, on the other hand, is going to blame and shame the opposition while trying to pass whatever deal he's reached on his own, citing the same justifications he used for raising tariffs on steel and aluminum imports -- national security. Perhaps he won't cite the same Act (i.e. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962), but he will use some similar method of bypassing the conventional institutions.

What happens afterward is anyone's guess. But one thing's for sure -- North Korea has already invested too much into its nuclear-arms program to simply abandon it now. The real question is whether or not Trump and his lackeys will fall for whatever crap Kim will try to peddle and how Congress will react.

If Trump's "my way or the highway" presidency up until now and Congress' staggering ineptitude are anything to go by, Kim Jong-un might just get what he wants. Let's hope Kelly and Mattis can rein the President in before he tries to pull another one of his antics.

Update (July 6th, 2018): A bit late for an update, but it looks like I was more or less accurate on how it would go down but less so when it came to Congress' reaction (although some in the press did take Trump to task on this front). Now we play the long game and see where this may take us. Maybe it will all be for the better? Maybe pigs will fly? Who knows? We've got the technology for it, I think...