The Art of the Deal, by Kim Jong Un

Worldly

On an all-summit episode of Worldly, Zack and Jenn are joined by actual North Korea expert Jeffrey Lewis (host of the Arms Control Wonk podcast) for an in-depth analysis of how the Trump-Kim meeting actually went. They talk about how the US didn’t get very much, while North Korea got exactly what it wanted and more. They also give a somewhat counterintuitive take on how the summit, which led President Donald Trump to cancel US-South Korea military exercises, could actually be good for South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Zack talks about his taste in Batman movies, Jenn gives terrible microwave advice, and Jeff compares North Korean propaganda to Fox News. Our guest, Jeffrey Lewis, is the host of the Arms Control Wonk podcast and the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies Here’s a good breakdown of the contents of the agreement and some of the winners and losers from this summit. Jenn published a transcript of the summit press conference. We discussed the press conference throughout the podcast. Jeff Lewis mentions that this is not the first time North Korea has made denuclearization agreements. He shouts out a few of those past agreements over the course of the podcast, but here’s a timeline of past agreements, all in one place. We played a clip from Sean Hannity’s interview with President Trump on Fox News after the Summit in which the president praises Kim Jong Un. When Jeff Lewis was explaining the challenges that a dictator can face at home, he mentioned former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed. Jeff also shouts out Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, when talking about Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia. We dive deep into South Korean politics in this episode. Here’s a primer on some of that. As Zack and Jeff discussed, North Korean news published a photo of John Bolton and Kim Jong Un shaking hands. Jenn shouted out Yochi’s recent piece about all the ways China is the real winner in this summit.

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