Tuesday's Trump-Kim summit in Singapore—billed as a historic meeting between visionary leaders willing to set aside their differences in the interest of global peace—bore, in the end, a closer resemblance to an old episode of the president's reality show than anything else. There were extensive discussions of a potential luxury-real-estate boom in a hermit kingdom where half the population lives in extreme poverty. ("They have great beaches," noted Trump. "You could have the best hotels in the world right there!") There was a White House–produced, trailer-style clip that apparently had the same production budget as a Dunder Mifflin ad. There was even a live interview with Celebrity Apprentice 2 also-ran Dennis Rodman, who stopped sobbing about his friendship with a war criminal only to thank the sponsor emblazoned on his black T-shirt—a cryptocurrency designed for the legal marijuana industry, because sure, why the hell not.

Afterward, Trump said that he "trusts" Kim, and he gushed about the "very special bond" they had developed. But the document they signed to memorialize their progress includes no firm commitments to denuclearize. It is, in effect, an agreement to try and agree on something, someday—exactly the sort of thing put out by diametrically opposed parties who aspire to the moral high ground but have no intention of conceding anything. It is a diplomatic Rorschach test, and its significance depends a lot on the partisan leanings of who you ask. (By now, if President Obama had taken his socialist flamethrower to this country's most important alliances and then flown around the world to gesture at landscaping installations with a murderous dictator, Paul Ryan would have personally nailed articles of impeachment to the White House door like Martin Luther's 95 Theses.) The most honest grade anyone could give it is "incomplete."

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