President Donald Trump arrived in Singapore on Sunday evening for a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The two leaders arrived in Singapore only hours apart and are scheduled to meet on June 12. President Trump arrived at Singapore’s Paya Lebar Air Base at 8:21 p.m. local time, where he was greeted by Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan. Kim arrived at Singapore’s commercial airport just over five hours earlier.
Before heading to his hotel, the President told reporters he was feeling “good” about the summit, but his advisers are worried Trump may be overly eager to ink the biggest deal of his career that could define his presidential legacy, relying solely on his instincts and ignoring professional advice.
Jack O’Donnell, a former Trump Organization executive, warns that when Trump is eager to make a deal, everything else fades from view. As a result, North Korea experts, U.S. allies and the President’s own advisers fear that he may be taking an approach which completely disregards experts advice on the upcoming negotiations.
“Sometimes he would say, ‘Get it at any price.’ When he makes his mind up that he wants something, it really doesn’t matter,” O’Donnell noted.
CNN writes that even experts hired to run his various enterprises have encountered obstacles when their advice differed from Trump’s own vision of success. Bruce Nobles, the airline executive Trump recruited to run his Trump Shuttle, pointed out that the President only accepts advice which “matches what he thinks” and otherwise rejects it, which could prove dangerous in talks with Kim.
The stakes for the summit are particularly high as President Trump is to negotiate the denuclearization of North Korea, a country that once threatened to develop a nuclear missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland. Trump has made clear, however, that he will lean on decades of deal-making when he faces the North Korean leader on Tuesday.
“I’ve been preparing for this all my life,” Trump said as he left the White House on Friday. “I’ve really been preparing all my life.”
According to Michael D’Antonio, Trump’s real estate and branding mogul’s skills may make or break the talks, depending on the other side’s response.
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