“On paper, there is nothing President Trump extracted from North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in their summit meeting that Mr. Kim’s father and grandfather had not already given to past American presidents,” the New York Times reports.

“In fact, he got less, at least for now. But as Mr. Trump made clear in a lengthy but vaguely worded reconstruction of their five hours of talks, none of that really matters to him.”

“Instead, he is betting everything on the ‘terrific relationship’ and ‘very special bond’ that he said he developed with the 34-year-old dictator, and Mr. Trump’s seeming certainty that they now view the future elimination of North Korea’s arsenal of atomic weapons the same way.”

“On a leader-to-leader level, relationships between the U.S. and its most powerful allies are in tatters,” Axios reports.

“Antipathy for the U.S. in allied countries extends far beyond those leaders, and it’s spiking under Trump. The U.S. has historically been the de facto leader within its strategic alliances, but an unpopular leader can quickly become a bully.”

“President Trump’s pledge to cancel military exercises on the Korean Peninsula surprised not only allies in South Korea but also the Pentagon,” the New York Times reports.

“Hours after Mr. Trump’s announcement in Singapore, American troops in Seoul said they are still moving ahead with a military exercise this fall — Ulchi Freedom Guardian — until they receive guidance otherwise from the chain of command.”

“In Washington, officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House were scrambling to figure out exactly the impact of Mr. Trump’s comments.”

Nicholas Kristof: “Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.”

“Within North Korea, the ‘very special bond’ that Trump claimed to have formed with Kim will be portrayed this way: Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.”

“In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little.”

First Read: “A question to ponder: What would the Republican Party have said if Barack Obama made this same deal and held the same meeting with North Korea’s dictator? How would they have reacted?”