The Pentagon is soon to announce an end the United States’ to joint military exercises with South Korea the day after President Donald Trump met with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un — and many pundits warn that he appears to be making even more concessions to the authoritarian leader.
NBC News reported the Pentagon’s plans to end the large-scale “war games” was not, according to U.S. officials, related to the Hanoi summit and had been planned for “some time.”
Nonetheless, the officials told NBC, the move is meant to “ease tensions” with North Korea.
As Fox News’ Pentagon reporter Lucas Tomlinson noted, Trump called the joint exercises “very expensive” when he was in Vietnam.
Mike Walker, the former acting Secretary of the Army, alluded to the Trump administration’s claim that the president walked away from a deal with Kim Jong-un in his tweet responding to the news.
“Trump did make a deal with Kim,” Walker tweeted. “A bad deal.”
Veteran White House journalist Paul Brandus noted from his “West Wing Reports” account that although Trump “got nothing from North Korea,” he is nevertheless “making a huge [concession]: ending large-scale military readiness drills with South Korea.”
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