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May 01, 2018

Yea... Right...

Condoleezza Rice's advice to Trump: Leave the details of Kim negotiations 'to people who understand all the nuance'

By QUINT FORGEY

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has a message for President Donald Trump ahead of his planned summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: Don’t sweat the details.

“Don't try to negotiate the details with Kim Jong Un,” Rice told the hosts of “Fox & Friends” in a Tuesday interview. “Leave that to people who understand all the nuances of this situation.”

The former top American diplomat during the George W. Bush administration urged Trump to consider the interests of Asian allies when he arrives at the negotiating table with Kim.

“Really recognize that others are at stake,” she said. “There are other countries that have interests here. Japan, for instance has interests here. South Korea of course has interests here.”

Rice also discouraged Trump from ruling out the deployment of U.S. military forces to reinforce the terms of a potential nuclear agreement.

“Don't be anxious about moving American military forces,” she advised the commander in chief. “American military forces are a stabilizing force — not just on the Korean Peninsula, but in the region as a whole.”

Finally, Rice warned the president — who recently praised Kim as “very honorable” — to “never forget” the despotic nature of the North Korean leader’s government.

“This is a regime that murdered an American citizen just a little while ago,” she said. “A regime where the leader had his half-brother murdered in Malaysia using VX gas. A brutal regime. Human rights violations. A death camp for its own citizens. Don't forget the nature of the regime.”

Trump on Saturday claimed that his hotly anticipated meeting with Kim could take place within the month. "I think we will have a meeting over the next three or four weeks,” he said at a rally in Washington, Michigan.

On Monday, the president floated on Twitter the idea of holding the summit at a facility inside the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula. And later that day, speaking alongside Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari during a bilateral news conference at the White House, Trump revealed that American intelligence officials are also considering Singapore as a possible host country for the historic negotiations.

"I will say this, the good news, everybody wants us, it has the chance to be a big event,” he said.

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