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U.S. President Donald Trump on Air Force One.
- Donald Trump attacked Senate Democrats on Friday for pushing a hardline set of demands for his upcoming summit with Kim Jong Un.
- Experts almost unanimously said the Democrats were off base, and found it shocking they would try a more hardline approach than Trump himself.
- The Democrats have been called "childish" and "delusional" for their letter and demands.
President Donald Trump went off on Senate Democrats for pushing a hardline set of demands for his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday.
"Obama, Schumer and Pelosi did NOTHING about North Korea, and now weak on Crime, High Tax Schumer is telling me what to do at the Summit the Dems could never set up.
"Schumer failed with North Korea and Iran, we don't need his advice!" Trump tweeted on Friday morning.
Members of congress have a limited role in conducting foreign policy for the US, and Schumer opposed the Iran deal, so it's not entirely clear what Trump would have liked them to do, or expect them to have achieved.
But Trump isn't alone in bashing the Democrats for a seemingly extreme set of demands for the summit.
The senators wrote in a letter to Trump earlier this week which said: "Sanctions relief by the U.S. and our allies should be dependent on dismantlement and removal of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Any deal that explicitly or implicitly gives North Korea sanctions relief for anything other than the verifiable performance of its obligations to dismantle its nuclear and missile arsenal is a bad deal."
They also demanded "anytime, anywhere" inspections of North Korea's weapons programs.
Such an agreement would go above and beyond the Iran deal, which much of the Democratic party supported.
But experts almost unanimously said the Democrats were off base, and found it shocking they would try a more hardline approach than Trump himself.
"It's delusional. There is no other way to put it," Vipin Narang, a North Korea expert at MIT tweeted. "Unrealistic expectations are unhelpful,"Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association Kelsey Davenport tweeted.
Essentially, experts agree that North Korea is unwilling to give up all of its nuclear weapons before the US gives them any sanctions relief or help. The New York Times went as far as calling them childish.
"Democrats Childishly Resist Trump's North Korea Efforts," New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote of their letter.