Do we really want 'distracted' Trump to meet North Korea's Kim Jong Un?
The president is said to have a very short attention span - it could be a risk when he sits down with the North Korean leader.
Friday 27 April 2018 02:02, UK
Peace talks are always welcome especially after the kind of year they've had on the Korean Peninsula. Aren't they?
Or should we actually be willing these historic talks between Korean leaders to fail?
Should we all be hoping they go so badly that the next meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un never happens?
Bear in mind what we all know now about Donald Trump the diplomat.
We know now he is not the dealmaker he would have us all believe.
As one well-placed observer put it, Donald Trump's negotiating skills are more urban myths than anything else.
Look at his legendary fortune.
It's been estimated if he had put the money he inherited from his father into a share tracker fund, for instance, rather than use it to make deals to build his business, he would actually be twice as wealthy as he is now.
His hotels and casinos declared bankruptcy four times, so much for the deals he made trying to make them successful.
The man who knows more about Trump the deal maker than anyone is the man who wrote his book, The Art of the Deal, and who now bitterly regrets it.
Tony Schwartz has said he had to work hard to ignore all of the evidence of Trump's poor deal-making and "put lipstick on a pig" to create the image of Trump as a great negotiator.
The president, Mr Schwartz says, has no attention span: "It's impossible to keep him focused on any subject for more than a few minutes - apart from his own self aggrandisement.'
Think about that.
:: Trump weighing up 'three or four dates' for historic Kim Jong Un summit
The North Korean problem has challenged some of the brightest minds in diplomacy.
It is about to be taken on by a man who reportedly can't or won't concentrate on briefings unless they are kept short and read out to him.
This president will be careering into one of the most globally consequential meetings of our time potentially ill informed about what he is getting into.
In leaked transcripts of Trump's calls with other leaders we have seen what can happen.
His poor grasp of which end of the stick he was holding with the Australian prime minister for instance, one of America's closest allies, ended up with Trump ranting angrily and ending the call early.
Imagine something like that face to face, with a volatile, inscrutable leader, armed with nuclear weapons.
Donald Trump's supporters say his policies should be credited with bringing the North Korean leader to talks.
Previous administrations have always used the prospect of a face to face meeting as something to dangle as a carrot to entice concessions from the North Koreans, who crave an equal footing with America.
Donald Trump's given that carrot away for nothing.
And Trump's posturing, terrifying rhetoric, and grandstanding were arguably exactly what Kim Jong Un needed over the last year.
The threats gave him the solid reason he needed to give his own people, and any rivals in government, permission to let him go hell for leather to build the bomb.
Now he has a nuclear capability, he can meet the US president stronger than he was a year ago and find out along with the rest of just how good a dealmaker Donald Trump really is.
Do we really want that to happen?