https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/trump-kim-north-korea-denuclearization/593122/ The Day Denuclearization Died The first Trump-Kim summit was about North Korea committing to giving up nuclear weapons. The second was about defining what that meant. This time, nuclear weapons didn't even come up. There were many remarkable aspects of the U.S. president’s surprise meeting with the North Korean leader at the border, but perhaps the most notable was the absence of the issue that brought Trump and Kim together in the first place one year ago: Pyongyang’s development of a nuclear-weapons arsenal that directly threatens the United States and its allies, and which Trump’s advisers once vowed to remove by 2021. From the moment Trump greeted Kim with an extended hand (“My friend! … It’s my honor.”), to their first comments to reporters, to their remarks to the media while meeting one-on-one, the president never publicly mentioned North Korea’s nuclear program, and Kim didn’t bring it up either. Trump raised the subject twice during an earlier news conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, but in both cases it was to briefly note that Kim hasn’t tested nuclear weapons while engaged in talks with the United States. (It fell to Moon to note that he and Trump still agreed on the ultimate objective of denuclearization.)