This raises a question with a great deal of relevance for the 2020 campaign: Can Trump mount a sufficient amount of spectacle and photo opportunities to create the illusion of substantive accomplishment?

There are different kinds of theater presidents engage in; for instance, like all presidents, Trump participates in photo-ops for the purpose of arguing for a policy (standing in front of prototype border walls) and stages photo-ops to disseminate news of actual successes, such as bill-signings and ribbon-cuttings.

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But Trump’s stroll with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is of a different genre: the photo-op meant to displace what is actually a dramatic policy failure.

When he took office, Trump confronted the same dilemma on North Korea that every other recent president has faced: As far as the North Koreans are concerned, there is nothing we could offer them that would be worth giving up their nuclear program in order to get. Kim plainly believes that his weapons are what makes it impossible for the West to invade his country and depose him, and he’s probably right. He looks at the experiences of Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi — who didn’t have nukes and were eventually deposed and killed — and wants to avoid their fate. For him, it’s literally life and death.

This leaves us in an almost impossible position. We can offer inducements that are insufficient or make threats that Kim knows we won’t back up. Neither one will convince the regime to give up its weapons.

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But Trump thought he had something no other president has had, something that would enable him to get Kim to give up those weapons: his dynamic personality and unparalleled dealmaking ability. Unfortunately, as we’ve learned all too well, Trump is actually the world’s worst negotiator, and as for his personality, I’ll let you reach your own conclusions about that.

So it has become obvious that Kim has been playing Trump like a violin. It wasn’t hard for the North Koreans to figure out that Trump has a powerful need for flattery, and if you satisfy it, he’ll do almost anything you want. “We fell in love,” Trump has said of what happened between him and Kim. “He wrote me beautiful letters. And they’re great letters. We fell in love.”

Since then, Trump’s treatment of Kim has reached near-Putin levels of obsequiousness. Trump even absolved Kim of responsibility for the death of American college student Otto Warmbier, who died after being held in a North Korean prison. (“He tells me he didn’t know about it, and I take him at his word.”)

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This love affair between the two leaders consists mostly of Kim arranging for Trump to feel important while offering no real substantive concessions. After their first meeting, Trump tweeted, “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” then told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, “He’s de-nuking, I mean he’s de-nuking the whole place. It’s going to start very quickly. I think he’s going to start now.”

The whole place, needless to say, has not been “de-nuked.”

And it won’t be any time soon. So what will Trump say when a question gets asked in a presidential debate about North Korea’s nuclear weapons? Will he wax rhapsodic about the beauty of Kim’s letters to him? Will he insist that with a few more meetings, a few more handshakes, a few more strolls, he and Kim will arrive at a deal to remove the weapons? And why would anyone believe that?