The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

The lunch ended shortly thereafter, at twelve thirty, but we were still stuck because the joint statements weren’t ready. Trump and Kim decided to walk in the hotel garden, which produced endlessly rebroadcast television footage but nothing else. Finally, we held the signing ceremony. The North Korean delegation was very impressive. They all clapped in perfect unison, loud and hard, for example whenever Kim said or did something noteworthy, which was quite a contrast with the raggedy performance of the US delegation. Trump did several one-on-one press interviews before the huge media event began shortly after four p.m., when he unexpectedly played our “recruitment” video. The coverage was extraordinary, and then we were off to Washington, my fondest wish, before anything else went wrong. Shortly after Air Force One was airborne, Trump called Moon and then Abe to brief them. (Pompeo stayed in Singapore, traveling on to Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo to provide more-detailed readouts of what had happened.) Trump told Moon that things could not have gone better, and they both spoke glowingly of what was accomplished. Trump asked Moon, a little belatedly, about how to implement the agreement, repeating what he said in the press conference, that he had been up for twenty-seven straight hours, something Kelly and I knew for sure was not true. Moon stressed, as Seoul’s representatives did subsequently in public statements, that Kim had made a clear commitment to denuclearization. Abe ...