President Donald Trump is giving North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a “master class” in negotiating the denuclearization of the rogue state, national security adviser John Bolton said Sunday.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Bolton said North Korea has a year to come to a “strategic decision” after its assurances at a June summit in Singapore that it would give up its nuclear weapons.
“The president is giving Kim Jong Un a master class and how to hold a door open for somebody, and if the North Koreans can't figure out how to walk through it, even the president's fiercest critics will not be able to say it's because he didn't open it wide enough,” Bolton said.
"If they make a strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons they can do it within a year,” he said. “We are waiting to see evidence that in fact that strategic decision has been made."
Bolton also asserted no one should “underestimate" Trump's resolve in a trade war standoff with China.
“I think the pressure will continue. I think the president has made that very clear,” Bolton said.
Bolton also defended Trump’s confidence in his national security team’s assertion that Russia was responsible for meddling in the 2016 election — and defended the president’s assertion that it’s not only Russia that’s interfering.
It was Trump’s “deep concern about Russian election meddling” that prompted him to “put the four operating heads and myself out for that press briefing” last week, Bolton said.
“No question that Russia was the principal violator in 2016 and that their activity this year puts them in the lead,” he added. “Although as people said, activity so far at least is down from 2016, but it does not exclude the potential for others to meddle and the broader issue that I think FBI Director Christopher Wray talked about in particular — of influence efforts that go beyond the specifics of a particular election. I think that's very troubling too and something we need more focus on."
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