I do agree with your assessment of the Warmbier affair, though. You don’t have to be an inscrutable Asian to realize America has lost face on this issue. A public statement by Kim, reiterating what Trump now alleges, would have cost the N Koreans nothing but would have gone a long way towards establishing an atmosphere of trust between the two countries. The fact they have not done so speaks volumes amongst the undecided and uncommitted.

As it is, we have yet another example of Trump baring his rump and assuming the position to yet another vicious dictator. N Korea, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, the Philippines….Trump may be perceived by the drooling cretins on the American Right as a tough guy, but in the rest of the world he’s coming across as the stereotypical girly man. Not only does this encourage the bad guys, it scares those allies which have counted on us in the past for support.

Ask any Kurd. You’ll get an earful.

“I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen,” Trump said. “It just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen.”

Trump said that he spoke to Kim about the death of Warmbier — whose family has called it a murder — and that Kim “feels badly about it.” He said the North Korea leader, who rules the country with an iron grip, knew about the case but learned about it only after the fact because, Trump suggested, “top leadership” might not have been involved.

U.S. negotiators are no longer demanding that North Korea agree to disclose a full accounting of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs as part of talks this week between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, according to current and former senior U.S. officials.

The decision to drop, for now, a significant component of a potential nuclear deal suggests a reality that U.S. intelligence assessments have stressed for months is shaping talks as they progress: North Korea does not intend to fully denuclearize, which is the goal Trump set for his talks with Kim.

Disclosure of a full, verifiable declaration of North Korea’s programs is the issue over which the last round of serious negotiations between Pyongyang and world powers, including the U.S., fell apart a decade ago.