THE PRESIDENT – AT 1:35 P.M. ET:   He stands at 49% in today's Rasmussen tracker.  We'll know by Friday how much of a boost the North Korea summit is giving him, if any.  I would love to see him go over 50% and stay there.

Other polls have Mr. Trump lower, but the general trend has been upward. 

We're now starting to get the first real detail journalism in response to the summit conference in Singapore, and the document it produced, reprinted below.  The journalism is predictable.  A press corps that normally operates on a leftist, adolescent level may have gone up half a grade in school in covering the summit, but no more.  One senses an almost desperate attempt to disparage the president's performance, suggesting that he was taken by Kim Jong Un, that nothing real was accomplished, and that it simply proved the need for someone like...Ms. Hillary.

It's absurd.

We're told today by some journalists that Trump put Kim on the same level as the president of the United States.  Is that laughable, or what?  Our visitor from North Korea could barely pay his hotel bill.  His people are starving.  He is surrounded by American strike forces.  We could wipe his country out in 20 minutes.  He can't touch ours.  And Kim, unlike Trump, goes home to...North Korea.  He got a few days of attention, and some cosmetic concessions.  That's it.  Now it is clear he must produce, must make real change happen for North Korea, or he will be back in the box he was in last week, a little leader presiding over a bankrupt country.

And he is facing Donald Trump, not Barack Obama.

Just as Mikhail Gorbachev faced Ronald Reagan, not Jimmy Carter.

You'll be hearing all kinds of opinions in the next few days.  Discount 90% of them.  We will not know the full outcome of this summit for months, maybe years.  The real negotiating now starts, under the skillful hand of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Please remember that we are trying to turn an enemy into a friend.  Maybe some people thought Trump would hit Kim over the head with a copy of "The Art of the Deal."  Not exactly the way to do it. 

At the end of World War II, Douglas MacArthur, who became the regent presiding over the defeated nation of Japan, was photographed with Emperor Hirohito, the very symbol of what we hated – Pearl Harbor, Japanese prison camps, three years of bitter fighting with high American casualties.  But still, MacArthur allowed the photo to be taken.  He knew he had to deal with the emperor, a religious figure, who was permitted to stay on the throne as part of Japan's surrender agreement.

In Europe, General Eisenhower, after Germany's defeat, had to deal with German officials who had been part of the Nazi regime, or fought with Nazi forces.  His job was to turn them into allies, which he did.  Was it not Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist, who was brought to America to help build our missile program?  I hated that idea, but understood it.

Unlike his predecessor, Field Marshal Obama, President Trump negotiates from a position of strength.  Several weeks ago, as you'll recall, he pulled out of this summit conference because he didn't feel that Kim was acting appropriately.  Kim straightened up, and the conference went ahead.  Kim understands that Trump can do that again.

Give the president some space and time, realizing that those American carrier groups are still in the region and are not being withdrawn, and that heavy sanctions are still locked on North Korea, and will remain if there are not satisfactory results from our ongoing talks.

Just don't expect a positive press toward the president.  CNN is already at work disparaging the Singapore summit.  Trump will last longer than CNN.

June 12, 2018