The appointment of John Bolton to the post of National Security Adviser to the President was a mistake. Granted he is a conservative hawk in line with the direction of Trump’s thinking, but when it comes to active participation in diplomacy and international affairs, he is a wrecking ball. Unlike the new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose views are mostly similar to Bolton’s and who is possessed of diplomatic skills to enable him to achieve his aims, Bolton is a loud mouth who is utterly clueless about what is in anybody else’s mind but his own. His does more harm than good in government, which is why Bush II had to get rid of him.
After the triumph of Pompeo’s talks with Kim Jon Un which first produced the agreement, date and place for a meeting, with all kinds of unilateral moves by NK to ease tensions, followed by the release of three imprisoned Americans, regarded by Trump as a break through only he, the greatest President ever, could achieve, we have the whole North Korea scenario in the air because Bolton goes on TV to talk about a Libya style deal with Pyongyang. Clever. Gaddafi, as everyone knows, ended up dead in a ditch.
So Kim Jon Un starts cancelling stuff. Trump needs this meeting to go ahead. If it fails to get off the ground he will look a fool. Moreover after the breakdown with his European allies over Iran and Jerusalem, he has already spent a lot of diplomatic capital. People are waiting to see the returns.