NORK PRESS REPORTS ON SUMMIT – AT 11:30 P.M. ET:   The controlled North Korean press has been reporting its version of the summit conference in Singapore.  We read this stuff primarily to get hints as to what the government is thinking.  From AFP: 

Kim Jong Un invited Donald Trump to visit North Korea during their historic summit and the US President accepted, Pyongyang state media reported Wednesday, calling it the start of a “radical switchover” in the nuclear-armed Cold War foes’ fraught relations.

The unprecedented encounter in Singapore Tuesday saw the leader of the world’s most powerful democracy shake hands with the third generation scion of a dynastic dictatorship, standing as equals in front of their nations’ flags.

Kim agreed to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a stock phrase favored by Pyongyang that stopped short of long-standing US demands for North Korea to give up its atomic arsenal in a “verifiable” and “irreversible” way.

In its first report on the landmark summit, the official KCNA news agency ran a glowing dispatch on the talks, describing them as an “epoch-making meeting” that would help foster “a radical switchover in the most hostile (North Korea)-US relations.”

The report said the two men each asked the other to visit their country.

“The two top leaders gladly accepted each other’s invitation,” KCNA said.

Pyongyang has reason to feel confident after the meeting, which was a major coup for an isolated and heavily sanctioned regime that has long craved international legitimacy.

COMMENT:  As we noted earlier, editorial opinions expressed now should be largely ignored.  The president expressed confidence in a Fox interview that the North understands our requirements for progress, which include complete de-nuclearization.  The president made clear that this whole effort may eventually fail, which was his way of signaling the North that he was prepared to walk away from a bad deal, just as Reagan did in dealing with Gorbachev.

The people in Congress whom I respect on defense matters, like Tom Cotton of Arkansas, are expressing satisfaction at the outcome of the summit and are relaxed on whatever concessions Trump may have made.  Cotton in particular expressed confidence that Trump would not back down on our major demands.  I share that confidence and hope that I'm right.

June 12,  2018