Trump Tweets North Korea Is 'No Longer a Nuclear Threat'

President Trump tweeted upon landing back on US soil, and one sentence in particular is grabbing attention: "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea." In a subsequent tweet he wrote that "before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer - sleep well tonight!" The AP isn't so sure, calling it "a bold and questionable claim" in the wake of a summit "that produced few guarantees on how and when Pyongyang would disarm." CNN picks up on that thread, noting the document Trump and Kim Jong Un signed "reaffirmed [Kim's] firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

That's minus the "verifiable and irreversible" part the US had previously wanted, and makes for a pledge that CNN sees as essentially identical to what Kim said he would do in his April meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The Guardian reports that when asked about verification on Tuesday, Trump had this to say: "We're going to have to check it and we will check it. We'll check it very strongly." Former National Security Adviser and UN ambassador Susan Rice was blunt in comments to NPR, describing the current nuclear threat from North Korea as "real and present and unabated ... grave and pernicious. ... It's a rather preposterous claim from the president." (More President Trump stories.)