Mr. Trump has a long history of showing off to visitors. His 26th-floor office at Trump Tower has a windowsill crammed with mementos, including a championship belt sent to him by the boxer Mike Tyson; a football helmet from Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback whom the president once said he hoped would be his son-in-law; and a basketball shoe signed by Shaquille O’Neal, the N.B.A. star.
“This is some serious foot,” he told a Wall Street Journal reporter, gesturing at the shoe, during the 2016 presidential campaign.
What makes Mr. Kim’s letters different, analysts said, is that they are key to a highly sensitive diplomatic negotiation over North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. The North Korean leader, they said, has set out methodically to cultivate Mr. Trump — building a rapport with him, even to the exclusion of other senior American officials, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is overseeing the negotiations.
Some analysts said they believed that South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, had counseled Mr. Kim on the wording in the letters, calculating that the president would respond to flattery and a solicitous tone.
If so, it has worked: Mr. Trump has been unstinting in his praise of Mr. Kim, even as the nuclear negotiations have bogged down, sometimes rancorously. In one letter, said a person who saw it, Mr. Kim complained that he did not want to deal with Mr. Pompeo — only with Mr. Trump.
“We really have established a very good relationship,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, noting that he and Mr. Kim would meet for a second time. If he had not been elected, Mr. Trump added, the United States and North Korea would be involved in a “nice, big, fat war.”
“From a negotiation standpoint, what Trump thinks is happening is that he has the trust of Kim Jong-un,” said Joseph Y. Yun, a former State Department official who has negotiated with North Korea.
Source : Nytimes
