Kim Jong Un "Love Letters" Got Nothing
Trump held three summits with Kim Jong Un, exchanged "love letters," cancelled military exercises, and legitimized the dictator on the world stage. North Korea got everything; the U.S. got nothing. NK expanded from ~30 to ~50 warheads.
Trump held three unprecedented summits with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (Singapore 2018, Hanoi 2019, DMZ 2019), exchanged 27 personal letters, and declared "we fell in love." In return for this legitimization of the world's most brutal dictatorship, the United States received nothing.
What Trump gave away:
- Unilaterally cancelled joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises — a major North Korean ask — without consulting Seoul
- Granted Kim face-to-face meetings with a sitting U.S. president — something North Korea had sought for decades
- Provided footage North Korean state TV used in propaganda videos touting Kim's "supernormal political acumen"
What the U.S. got: nothing. No denuclearization, no weapons inspections, no treaty, no reduction in missiles.
During Trump's courtship of Kim, North Korea expanded its nuclear arsenal from an estimated 20-30 warheads to approximately 50, tested its largest ICBM, and enshrined nuclear weapons as permanent state policy. By 2025, Trump himself conceded the failure by calling North Korea a "nuclear power" — effectively acknowledging that his personal diplomacy had achieved nothing while the threat grew worse.