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The Note: Trump, Kim relationship based on trust – and how to verify - ABC News

posted onJune 15, 2018
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Article snippet: The TAKE with Rick Klein They need each other now more than ever. Beyond the handshakes and the photo ops, the flags, the logos, the special video, the closing statement and the "message of peace," President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un have constructed something critical and tenuous in Singapore where they need something valuable and often fleeting from each other: trust. Decades of mutual hostility and bellicosity have to and must continue to melt away if the vague language agreed to in Singapore is to be achieved. Kim got a major concession in having the meeting at all, and goes from here with a giant assumption that he will behave the way the American president believes he will. "Sometimes the people you most distrust turn out to be the most honorable ones, and the people that you do trust turn out to be not the honorable ones," the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, shortly after the agreement with North Korea was signed. “I believe he wants to get it done. ... I do trust him.” Trump called it "a great moment in the history of the world" early Tuesday. What history remembers will hinge on the famous Reagan-era approach to the Soviet Union: "Trust, but verify." Where does trust stem from in a regime that has misled, obscured and brutalized, and has remained isolated along the way? How on earth do you begin to verify there? "Anyone can make war," the president said Tuesday, "but only the most courageous can make peace." Trump and... Link to the full article to read more

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