Successful Singapore Summit

President Donald Trump spoke to reporters in Singapore on Tuesday, June 12, in an hour-long news conference after he met with Kim Jong Un. Six of the main topics that he brought up were: 

Ending 'War games': Trump said he agreed to put an end to the United States’ “war games,” or joint military exercises, with South Korea “unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. I want to get our soldiers out. I want to bring our soldiers back home, but that’s not part of the equation right now. I hope it will be eventually.” 

Denuclearization timetable: Trump wants Kim to denuclearize North Korea as quickly as “mechanically” possible. Trump pledged to remove sanctions on the country when officials are able to verify that “nukes are no longer a factor.” 

Missile test site's destruction: "Kim has told me that North Korea is already destroying a major missile engine testing site,” Trump said, adding: "That's not in your signed document. We agreed to that after the agreement was signed." 

Confidence in Kim Jong Un: Trump said he trusts that Kim wants to fulfill the agreement: “I think he might want to do this as much or even more than me because they see a bright future for North Korea.” 

Future meetings: Trump said he will invite Kim to the White House and visit North Korea “at the appropriate time.” He also said they may have another summit.

Trump dreams of condos on North Korea’s beaches:Towards the end of the presser, Trump was asked about his weird propaganda video, and the economic opportunity that he has seen in North Korea. “As an example, they have great beaches,” Trump said. “You see that whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said boy look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo? … You could have the best hotels in the world right there,” Trump continued. “Think of it from a real estate perspective. You have South Korea, you have China and they own the land in the middle. How bad is that, right? It’s great.”

Trump Sits Down for an Interview with Sean Hannity

An interview between President Trump and Sean Hannity will air on Fox News Channel’s "Hannity," Tuesday at 9:00pm ET. Trump was asked about some of the controversial remarks he had previously made, including calling Kim Jong Un "Little Rocket Man" and saying that North Korea's continued threats against the U.S. would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Here are two of the excerpts from the interview:

Hannity: "A lot of people critics quickly saying when you said, 'Little Rocket Man' or 'fire and fury,' or when he said, 'Oh, I’ve got a red button on my desk,' and you said, 'Well, mine’s bigger and it works better than yours,' how did it evolve from that to this? Because he did say basically from the beginning that we’re going to start over, but that has been building behind the scenes."

Trump: "Well, I think without the rhetoric we wouldn’t have been here. I really believe that. You know, we did sanctions and all the things you would do. But I think without the rhetoric- "[O]ther administrations, I don’t want to get specific on that, but you know they had a policy of silence. If [North Korea] said something very bad and very threatening and horrible, just don’t answer. That’s not the answer. That’s not what you have to do. So, I think the rhetoric — I hated to do it, sometimes I felt foolish doing it — but we had no choice." 

Hannity: "In the room alone and then the subsequent talks with your team and their team, how honest, how brutal, what was said? Try to bring people into the room."

Trump: "So we got along very well. We got along from the beginning. We started off, he and myself and two interpreters and uh, from the beginning we got along. I made the statement and I’ve said it before, I’ve said it about a lot of different kinds of relationships, you can tell at the beginning."

Hannity: “Could you tell at the beginning? (crosstalk) What was the first minute?”

Trump: “I felt very good at the beginning. I talked about we have to denuke this country, this country has to be denuked and he understood that. He fully understood it, he didn’t fight it.”

Nunes Deadline Update

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, (R-Cali), has given the Justice Department until today to provide access to documents concerning the FBI’s alleged informant looking into any Russian ties to President Trump’s 2016. 

In a letter sent to AG Rod Rosenstein on Friday, Devin Nunes demanded the documents be provided to all committee members and designated staff, which would go beyond top members of Congress which have been invited to view material related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Refusal to comply with the demand to allow lawmakers and designated staff to view the requested documents would be considered “an obstruction of a lawful Congressional investigation,” Nunes stated.

Trump Administration Drops Asylum Protections for Domestic Violence Victims

Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled Monday that victims of domestic abuse and gang violence generally will not qualify for asylum under federal law, a decision that advocates say will endanger tens of thousands of foreign nationals seeking safety in the United States. 

Sessions’ ruling vacated a 2016 decision by the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals that said an abused woman from El Salvador was eligible for asylum. Sessions told immigration judges, whose courts are part of the Justice Department, that his decision “restores sound principles of asylum and long-standing principles of immigration law.” He said it will help reduce the growing backlog of 700,000 court cases, more than triple the number in 2009. 

To qualify for asylum, foreign nationals must establish that they have a fear of persecution in their homeland based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group,” a catchall category that has in the past included victims of domestic violence and other abuse. 

But in the ruling, Sessions said such cases would be less common going forward. “Generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum,” he wrote. “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”

America’s Allies Losing Faith in the Country?

According to an Axios analysis of a Pew research study, on a leader-to-leader level, relationships between the U.S. and its most powerful allies are in tatters.  

Antipathy for the U.S. in allied countries extends far beyond those leaders, and it's spiking under Trump. The U.S. has historically been the de facto leader within its strategic alliances, but an unpopular leader can quickly become a bully. The G7 summit showed the limits to that approach. 

Early in George W. Bush's tenure, and particularly after 9/11, there was considerable goodwill toward the U.S. among the other global powers. That evaporated during the Iraq War and hit worrying lows (30% in Germany, 39% in France) before Bush left office. 

After the election of Barack Obama, views of the U.S. rebounded, dipping in Europe over time before ticking up again late in his tenure. The exception was Russia, which grew far more hostile to the U.S. 

When President Trump came into office, the approval numbers fell off a cliff except, again, in Russia. The 2018 numbers could be even lower.

Twitter CEO Dorsey Forced to Apologize for Eating Chick-Fil-A During Pride Month

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey ignited a backlash online after revealing that he ate at Chick-fil-A this month. On Saturday, Dorsey posted a photo on Twitter with the caption "Boost @ChickfilA," showing he had saved 10% on a $31.58 order at the fast-food chain. 

Critics immediately seized on Dorsey's support of Chick-fil-A, whose CEO has come under fire for his views on same-sex marriage, during Pride Month. People quickly joined in condemning Dorsey, with one saying, “On behalf of the whole LGBTQ community, Jack, kindly boost your head out of your a--.” 

The backlash shows Chick-fil-A still has lingering problems with its brand image following remarks six years ago by the company's CEO, Dan Cathy, regarding his views on same-sex marriage. Cathy set off a fury among gay-rights supporters in 2012 that led to nationwide protests after he told the Baptist Press that the company was "guilty as charged" for backing "the biblical definition of the family unit."

Reports soon emerged detailing Chick-fil-A's many charitable donations to anti-LGBTQ organizations. For months afterward, protesters rallied outside Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country and held "kiss-ins," where same-sex couples kissed in front of onlookers and TV cameras covering the backlash.

Mail Time!

• The problem Trump has is delivery and how he deals with other people. You can't alienate all of our allies and that's what is happening with these trade deals. He'll never tone it down and that's what I find so frustrating about his presidency. I like almost all the policies but the delivery and sticking his foot in his mouth is just crazy. 

• I disagree Bill. Giving these DACA kids exactly what their parents wanted for them is not going to make the situation better. Putting the moral responsibility for their situation on their law-breaking parents where it belongs is perfectly legitimate. 

• Hey Mr. O., just got my Amazon Fire stick so I can watch you on the tube again. I love it. I just renewed my premium membership and got a free book. 

• Bill, in 25+ years I have been watching, I've not seen in the word of the day segment two words I use regularly: balderdash and skullduggery. What say you? 

Word of the Day: Pawky