Trump-Kim Summit
Trump and Kim are starting off their summit with a one-on-one meeting, no advisers allowed
President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will start their summit in Singapore Tuesday morning with a one-on-one meeting, with translators but no advisers, for up to two hours before moving to an expanded bilateral meeting, a U.S. official tells The Associated Press. Trump arrived in Singapore on Sunday night, a few hours after Kim. On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim will lead U.S. negotiators in a working group with a North Korean delegation, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday night.
Kim's arrival in Singapore and meeting with Trump are being promoted heavily in North Korea. Kim and Trump will exchange "wide-ranging and profound views" on forging a new North Korea-U.S. relationship, "building a permanent and durable peacekeeping mechanism on the Korean Peninsula, the issue of realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and other issues of mutual concern," North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said Monday. Kim was driven from Singapore's airport to the St. Regis hotel in an armored black Mercedes-Benz stretch limousine; it is still unclear who is paying for his $8,000-a-night, 3,600-square-foot presidential suite at the St. Regis, though the White House had been exploring whether it should foot Kim's tab.
Trump has set out shifting aspirations for what he hopes to achieve at the summit, but he told reporters when he was leaving the G-7 summit in Canada on Saturday that he is feeling "very good" about the Kim Jong Un summit, reiterating that he will rely on his instincts to guide him. "Within the first minute, I'll know," Trump said. "My touch, my feel — that's what I do."