00:00We've been listening to President Donald Trump and South Korean President Yi Jae-myung at the
00:09White House in the Oval Office taking questions from reporters. A number of significant headlines
00:13during this first in-person meeting between Trump and his South Korean counterpart. The first since
00:18the South Korean presidential election in June. The president calling Yi Jae-myung a friend,
00:23saying that he feels very warmly towards South Korea. Notably, he was asked about relations
00:28between South Korea and North Korea. Trump touting his relationship with Kim Jong-un,
00:33saying that he hopes to meet with Kim Jong-un this year, even jokingly inviting the South Korean
00:38president to attend what would be a trilateral meeting together. Trump very quickly, though,
00:43after he was asked about meeting Kim Jong-un, pivoting, saying that Xi Jinping would like him
00:48to go to China. And then he talked about China giving the United States magnets in exchange for
00:53access to airplane parts and clearly trade with China top of mind there. The president was also
01:00asked about U.S. military presence in South Korea and what he described as a rumor about South Korean
01:07officials raiding U.S. military bases there. The South Korean president trying to clarify that,
01:12saying that the chain of command in the South Korean military was looked into after martial law,
01:18a sort of fake martial law, was installed in December. And there was some issues in South
01:25Korean politics, to say the least. But a lot of headlines there from Trump.
01:27So many. And he talked about denuclearization. He said Russia is willing to do it, referring to a
01:33conversation he'd had with Putin. And he thinks China is, too. We have our Kimberly Dozier here.
01:38We're going to talk with her about that in a second. That definitely needs a fact check. He also was
01:44asked about some domestic issues that we're also going to get to here, which is about the cities
01:49that he is planning to activate National Guard in, the search on John Bolton's house by the FBI. He
01:55quickly pivoted to what he called the raid on Mar-a-Lago at his own house, as he has done before. And then he
02:01was asked about Japan and Korea, because we should note that the Korean president is coming after a visit
02:09to Japan, which is kind of uncharacteristic. Normally, he would come straight to the U.S.
02:14versus his predecessors have. But because of, I guess, alliances that Japan and South Korea have
02:22with the U.S. being a little bit on less stable ground, it kind of speaks to Korea and Japan,
02:27who have certainly had their differences here in the past, kind of finding some common ground
02:32as they look to alternatives, as they consider these alliances with the U.S. economically and
02:39militarily a little bit more in question than usual. Kim Dozier, you were here. What stood out to you?
02:45Well, when he talked about denuclearizing the peninsula and said that Russia and China were
02:52willing, they've tried this before. And China has never been willing to join these talks and has
02:59instead aimed for parity with whatever the U.S. and Russia currently has. In terms of him talking
03:06about, hey, let's have a meeting with Kim Jong-un, ironically, this is the right Korean president to
03:13be talking to about it, because President Xi's Democratic Party has always wanted more economic
03:19ties, lowering of tensions, more relations with the North than the previous president, President
03:28Yun, who was, of course, deposed after he tried to declare martial law. So ironically, President Trump
03:36is reaching out to the right guy for that. But then he's also, in his tweet and then in these comments,
03:44he talked about South Korea having purges. And what he meant by that, it's emerging, is he heard
03:53about churches being raided. All that goes back to when President Yun was kicked out of office.
04:01His wife and a number of his high-ranking officials allegedly had used the Unification Church for
04:09kickbacks and corruption. And so the raids were part of that. But conservatives in the U.S. who are
04:15talking to Trump are saying that's an attack on the conservative community. So Trump is like, on the one
04:21hand, lashing out because he hears conservatives being dealt incorrectly with. But on the other
04:31hand, this is the right guy if he wants to open relations with the North. And notably, Yee jokingly
04:38suggested that a Trump Tower should be built in North Korea, saying, quote, so I can go play golf in
04:43Pyongyang as well. We saw President Trump, and he talked about walking into the DMZ and alleging that he
04:49had all these rifles pointed at him. Ultimately, though, no substantial agreement came out of
04:56this opening toward North Korea. Really the first time that you've had an American president
05:01literally go into North Korean territory to sort of open up a conversation with the hermit kingdom
05:08and Kim Jong-un. Again, nothing much came out of it. Do we expect things might go differently if
05:13that's attempted again? You know, it all broke down essentially over the denuclearization aspect.
05:21The North is not willing to denuclearize. They signed several agreements that were very vague,
05:27that talked about denuclearization as a goal, but they didn't have a ratification method or a schedule.
05:34And since that summit, North Korea has launched something like 100 plus missiles
05:40in missile testing has continued and expanded its nuclear weapons operations, according to experts
05:46who look at the satellite activity. So it's hard to see who or why Kim Jong-un would step back from
05:57the nuclear break. But Kim, this president puts a lot of stock in photo ops. Yeah. Right. I mean,
06:02we look to the Alaska summit with Putin and then really just what appeared to be this amazing
06:08shuttle diplomacy at the White House with all of these European leaders in Ukraine.
06:13Very quickly, though, it became clear that not much had come out of that summit with Putin.
06:19But I mean, the pictures are something you haven't seen before. The pictures with Kim Jong-un at the DMZ,
06:26something you haven't seen before. But in a way, that is enough. If you listen to President Trump,
06:34that is almost standalone to him as an accomplishment. But when you're looking at it from a national
06:40security perspective, that's not enough if it's short on deliverables.
06:45Yeah. You know, I remember having conversations with a group of MAGA conservatives during the
06:51administration where North Korea came up and they said Trump managed to denuclearize it. And they said
06:58to me, oh, no, no, Trump denuclearized it. And then Biden brought the nuclear weapons back.
07:07And I'm like, that's not what happened. But if Trump's base believes that, then these photo ops are
07:13serving a purpose. But back to the South Korean meeting, what's going to happen behind closed
07:18doors is Trump has been talking about pulling, possibly pulling out U.S. troops unless North Korea,
07:26South Korea pays more for basing them there. Costs about $3.5 billion to keep them there annually,
07:32about 28,000 troops. South Korea already pays a little over a billion for it annually.
07:38So Trump will surely be asking for a higher payment. Problem is with those troops and the threat of
07:45bringing them back to the United States, there literally isn't space for them to be garrisoned back
07:50in the U.S. There would have to be major construction to bring the troops and their families back to the
07:55continental U.S.
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