ONCE YOU'VE SOLD OUT TO OUR ENEMIES TO WIN THE JOB...:

When it began, with a South Korean official standing outside the White House announcing that the leaders of the United States and North Korea would meet for an unprecedented summit, President Trump believed he had accomplished a historic breakthrough -- an accomplishment, he told friends, that would secure his legacy and his reelection. [...]

[W]hile Trump privately blamed Chinese president Xi Jinping for souring North Korea on the meeting, U.S. observers, including some close to the White House, said that all along, the prospects for the summit had been caught between two competing currents: Trump's unbridled desire to make history and his advisors' increasing skepticism that Kim was willing to come anywhere close to Trump's fundamental demand that he relinquish his nuclear arsenal.

Some of that tension played out in public as the North Koreans threatened to pull the plug within days of Trump musing publicly about winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

But the roots of the trouble took shape earlier, according to friends of Trump, national security veterans and Korea experts.

On one side was Trump, guided by the desire to captivate a world audience, prove the establishment wrong and win the type of legacy-building achievement that transcends scandals at home in the same way that President Nixon's opening of China survived the tarnish of Watergate.

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