* In case you missed it, here’s the letter Trump sent to Kim Jong-un cancelling the much-ballyhooed summit.

* So sue me…I couldn’t resist an “I told you so.”

* Of course, twitter had some of the best responses.

https://twitter.com/EdKrassen/status/999699250878574593

* Matt Yglesias nailed it!

The White House announced Thursday morning that it is canceling the planned summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in light of statements from the North Korean government that make it clear that Pyongyang is not, in fact, going to make the kind of nuclear disarmament promises that the United States was expecting.

This is, all things considered, almost certainly a better idea than continuing to raise unrealistic expectations for a summit that was doomed to fail.

But it raises the question: Why did so much of the media and the political system insist on taking President Trump’s Korean nuclear diplomacy so seriously in the first place?

The factors that led to the collapse of the summit were there from the beginning. The only thing that ever seemed remotely promising about it was Trump’s say-so, but Trump’s say-so is meaningless. Not only is he a person who makes factual misstatements and lies, but he’s a person who has gotten ahead in life through extensive use of bullshit, leaving in his wake a trail of broken promises.

From his unpaid bills to contractors to his scam university to his brief period ripping off the shareholders of his eponymous company, this is what Trump does: He exploits normal human nature to sucker people into trusting him, and then he exploits his own ever-growing fame and power to get away with breaking the rules.

As president, this pattern has only continued.

* Roger Stone personally solicited dirt on Hillary Clinton from Julian Assange.

In a Sept. 18, 2016, message, Mr. Stone urged an acquaintance who knew Mr. Assange to ask the WikiLeaks founder for emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s alleged role in disrupting a purported Libyan peace deal in 2011 when she was secretary of state, referring to her by her initials.

“Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30–particularly on August 20, 2011,” Mr. Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio personality who had interviewed Mr. Assange several weeks earlier.

* Today congressional leaders were briefed on the FBI’s informant in the Russia inquiry. The Democrats who attended the briefing issued a statement that was short and to-the-point.

* The New York Daily News pulled no punches with their reaction to the new NFL rules about protests during the playing of the national anthem.

* Finally, I thought I’d leave you with a couple of things we can look forward to this fall. This is coming in November:

And to lift all of our spirits, this comes in September.

https://twitter.com/MurphyBrownCBS/status/996875088803782656
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