Despite the at this point comical buildup, it is unlikely that the Trump-Kim summit about to get underway will make much, or in fact any, progress towards North Korean nuclear disarmament.
This is in large part because there is nobody on Trump's staff who even understands what the details of such disarmament would entail: There is no White House science adviser, nor any other scientist on Trump's team capable of drafting an enforceable, verifiable nuclear agreement, because Trump's conservative staff hates those people and considers book-learners to all have cooties.
[A]s Mr. Trump prepares for the talks, he has no close aides on par with those who helped President Barack Obama negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. Mr. Obama’s advisers included Ernest J. Moniz, a nuclear physicist who led the Energy Department and oversaw the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and John Holdren, a physicist and expert in nuclear arms control who served as the White House science adviser.
“There is going to be the requirement for trade-offs, and that judgment is best made by people with technical expertise who are also very senior politically,” Mr. Moniz said. “That just does not exist in this administration.”
Credit to the New York Times, willing purveyor of the day's worst and stupidest take, for putting the Trump team's lack of nuclear experts in the larger context of their contempt for all scientific expertise, period. It is how you end up with widespread purges of science-backed policymakers in government agencies while nominating people like radio talk show screecher Sam Clovis to the same positions. Jim Bridenstine was a dull-minded House Republican hack of no particular merits before he became, inexplicably, the climate-denying head of NASA; it is best not to contemplate, for too long a stretch, the move to transfer key national nuclear responsibilities from the likes of nuclear physicist Moniz into the fumbling hands of Rick Dancing with the Stars Perry.
For the moment, though, we can be extraordinarily confident that no substantive progress will be made towards the theoretical Actual Damn Point of the Trump-Kim summit, the suspension of North Korea's nuclear ambitions in exchange for, presumably, an easing of the international sanctions against them. This is because nobody on Trump's staff has any concept of how to draft such a deal, what the specifics ought to be, and most importantly what measures are sufficient or insufficient for ensuring long-term verification of that deal. Trump nixed the disarmament treaty with Iran because he listened to longtime conservative hawks who simply wanted it gone, regardless of expert conclusions that the deal was working; he cannot hope to draft one on his own, at least one not written in the diplomatic equivalent of crayon, for the same reasons. And this, even without hardline neanderthals like John Bolton looking to sabotage the talks at every opportunity.
This is not to say the Donald Trump team will not be eager to broadcast some supposed “deal” in order to make our nation’s most successful traitor momentarily look good. Trump is under enormous pressure, at the moment, to accomplish even the most minor of diplomatic tasks without falling over his own feet. But don’t be surprised if didn’t fall over his own feet is treated, by his team, as a herculean accomplishment unmatched by any modern president, real or fictional, since Bill Pullman fended off interstellar invasion in his fighty-shooty jet.
The actual disarmament part? That would require an expertise nobody in this White House has—or can even put up with.