Trump and his Fox News allies have made their bed with Kim Jong-un. Now we'll all have to lie in it

When Donald Trump stepped across the DMZ into North Korea, the president did, indeed, make history. Unfortunately, historical events are not always positive, and Trump's reality show moment didn't move the needle towards making North Korea any less of a threat — especially to South Korea and Japan.

Trump had two previous meetings with North Korea that ended with the United States gaining little to no leverage with the Kim regime. While the administration attempted to frame the third as a kind of goodwill gesture, it should have come after significant concessions the president should have achieved in those meetings.

This time round, Trump spent plenty of time doing what he does best: caterwauling about press coverage and declaring stories about how nothing material has changed between the two countries since the first meeting in Hanoi to be "fake news." When pressed, Trump said the changes were like "day and night" and said that before their first meeting, North Korea had been conducting nuclear testing and ballistic missile testing.

While it is true that North Korea hasn't conducted any nuclear tests since 2017, the regime continues to build up its nuclear capabilities. North Korea conducted three missile tests in May. There was a debate over whether or not the tests constituted a "ballistic" missile test. If so, it would be a direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions. While Trump dismissed the tests were "ballistic" and insisted they were just short-range missiles, experts said they had no doubt the tests fell in the ballistic category.

What's worse is watching the cavalcade of Trump supporters buy into what he's doing, lacking any sense of awareness when it comes to their views about dictators. One doesn't have to go back all that far to find different opinions when someone named Barack Obama was in the White House.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted it was a "sign of strength" for Trump to attempt to achieve "peace." However, in 2016 she tweeted, "It's 5pm E.T., which means Pres Obama must be meeting with some dictator somewhere. Are there any left?"

Sean Hannity said of Trump's first meeting with Kim that Trump "deserves a lot of credit for being willing to talk to somebody that everybody thought would be a bad idea." However, when in 2013 Obama shook hands with Cuban's leader Raul Castro during Nelson Mandela's funeral in South Africa, Hannity snapped, "Is it just me or does it look like President Obama is more willing to give his time to our enemies than our allies?"

This hypocrisy surrounding national security and foreign policy could put allies and perhaps the United States in danger. Trump only cares about the external optics, and doesn’t realize that the North Korean press, under the thumb of Kim, will no doubt frame this latest meeting as a capitulation by the US.

Meanwhile, Kim is in the same position he was in when Trump took office. There is zero evidence regime has made any strides in getting to denuclearization, and why not? It's the most reliable card the country holds at the time, as long as sanctions remain in place.

Also at issue is Kim's abysmal humanitarian record. The word "despot" gets thrown around quite a bit these days, but Kim fits the bill. He rules with an iron fist, and that includes arbitrary arrests and prison sentences, torture in custody, and executions to maintain fear and control over the population. The estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people locked away in North Korea's prisons and internment camps likely don't care all that much Kim and Trump "get along."

At some point, the frivolities have to come to an end. If Trump wants a real foreign policy win, he will have to get North Korea to agree to a valid path to denuclearization. For starters. If not, then all the pomp and circumstance of the first two summits and Trump's skip across the DMZ will be for naught.

And if Trump loses? The next president will have his mess to clean up.