Leon Panetta: Trump’s Treating N. Korea as If He’s Working with Some Business Associates in New York

EXCERPT:

PANETTA: "I think the fundamental problem here is the president has treated this kind of high-level summit as if he was working with some business associates in New York and that, you know, if -- if suddenly they -- they said something that he agreed with, they thought they could ultimately have a deal. And -- and look, diplomacy, especially at that level, doesn’t work that way. What normally happens is that you have individuals like Mike Pompeo and others determine the substance of what’s going to happen in an agreement, determine what exactly is at stake, and then you have leaders come together to confirm that. That didn’t happen here. And so now, what’s going to happen — what we’re seeing is that the president is going to keep trying to defend a position that he assumed was the case. And so he’s going to criticize China. He’s going to criticize others. He’s going to ultimately say that it wasn’t his fault when the bottom line is, it was his fault because, frankly, they should not have arrived in an agreement without some backup negotiations to determine exactly what both sides would be committed to. That never happened."