July 19, 2018

Congress Moves to Force Trump to Come Clean on North Korea Talks

Featuring Abigail Grace

Source: The Daily Beast

Journalists Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Andrew Desiderio

President Donald Trump is “gaslighting” the planet about North Korea’s nukes, according to a well-connected analyst. So Congress is moving on multiple fronts to force the White House to come clean on its negotiations with Pyongyang.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced a bill that would, in the words of an aide involved in the process, give the administration some diplomatic “training wheels” and ensure that officials don’t agree to give away more concessions before North Korea’s nuclear capabilities are fully evaluated.

Meanwhile, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee is demanding an official assessment from the nation’s top intelligence chief on whether the president’s positive outlook on the negotiations holds water.

Trump claimed after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore that the nuclear threat from North Korea is “no longer”—despite his own White House’s claims to the contrary.

Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, compared the administration’s recent declarations of success regarding the negotiations to “gaslighting.”

“The statements coming out of the White House bear no relationship to reality whatsoever,” said Lewis. “It’s very clear that the intelligence community is not just saying that North Korea is expanding their capabilities. They are also saying that North Korea had a concrete plan to deceive the U.S. about locations and numbers.”

Read the Full Article at The Daily Beast

Authors

  • Abigail Grace

    Research Associate, Asia-Pacific Security Program

    Abigail Grace is a Research Associate in the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for New American Security (CNAS). Her work focuses on U.S. strategic competition with ...