Does Bolton find it revoltin' when Trump believes Kim Jong Un?

'My opinion doesn't matter'

National security adviser John Bolton toured the Sunday talk shows to try to put the best face on Donald Trump's underachieving nuclear-weapons summit with Kim Jong Un. It was a tall order, especially when Bolton was quizzed on CNN's "State of the Union" about Trump accepting the North Korean dictator's denial of any responsibility in the death of American student Otto Warmbier.

"Do you take Kim Jong Un at his word?” host Jake Tapper asked. “The president takes him at his word,” Bolton replied. Tapper pressed on: "I know he does, but what about you?” Said Bolton: “My opinion doesn’t matter.”

Tapper, skeptically: "You’re national security adviser to the president … your opinion matters quite a bit.” Bolton's response: “I’m not the national security decision-maker. That’s his view.”

But on "Fox News Sunday," Bolton tried a different tack — trying to close his seeming distance from Trump by offering an alternate interpretation of the president's remarks absolving Kim for the abuse of Warmbier. "When he says, 'I’m going to take him at his word,' it doesn’t mean that he accepts it as reality. It means that he accepts that was what Kim Jong Un said," Bolton said. (Reality check: Trump said, "I don't believe he knew about it … He tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word.")

There was another hint of daylight between Trump and the top adviser on CBS' "Face the Nation" when Bolton was asked if North Korea has gained more than the U.S. from Trump's diplomatic engagement.

"The president's view is he gave nothing away," Bolton said. Then Bolton was asked: "But do you actually believe that?"

"The president's view is he gave nothing away," he repeated. "That's — that's what matters, not my view. As I've said before, I guess I can't get people to listen, so I'll try it one more time. I'm the national security adviser. I'm not the national security decision-maker." For more on the summit post-mortems, see Newsday's story by Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

Trump: My 'horrible position'

Trump may have been stung by the criticism from Warmbier's parents, who were his guests at the 2018 State of the Union speech, when he still took a hard line against Kim.

"I never like being misinterpreted, but especially when it comes to Otto Warmbier and his great family," Trump tweeted Friday. "Of course I hold North Korea responsible … for Otto’s mistreatment and death." He didn't mention Kim.

On Saturday, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump suggested he was going easy on Kim because he wants to maintain a dialogue.

“I’m in such a horrible position, because in one way I have to negotiate. In the other way, I love Mr. and Mrs. Warmbier, and I love Otto. And it’s a very, very delicate balance.”

Janison: The biggest flipper of all

Once, they were the best people. Later, they were the worst. When it comes to Trump flipping on past underlings, Michael Cohen is just one more face in the crowd.

Newsday's Dan Janison reviews the roster. There's Jeff Sessions, who went from "world class legal mind," when named attorney general, to "disgraceful" to an object of mockery as Trump mimicked his southern accent at CPAC. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was "doing a great job" until Trump asked: "What's he done for me?"

Others once favored, from Steve Bannon to Omarosa Manigault-Newman, have gotten tossed into Trump's dumpster.

Follow the paper trails

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) disclosed he plans to issue document requests to more than 60 people on Monday, including Trump's closest business associates, as part of an obstruction-of-justice investigation.

The list includes the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., and Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Nadler said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Nadler said, “it’s very clear that the president obstructed justice,” but the prospect of impeachment was “a long way down the road,” noting that evidence has to be “all sorted out.” Nadler also said crimes and impeachable offenses can be two different things. For more, see Figueroa's story for Newsday.

Paul over the wall

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky became the fourth Republican senator to announce a "yes" vote on a resolution to block Trump from using a national-emergency declaration to find billions of dollars for a southern border wall. That clinches a defeat for Trump when the resolution, which has already passed in the House, comes to a vote.

“We may want more money for border security, but Congress didn’t authorize it," Paul said at an event in his home state, according to the Bowling Green Daily News. "If we take away those checks and balances, it’s a dangerous thing.”

Paul went a step further in a commentary for Fox News: “Without question, the president’s order for more wall money contradicts the will of Congress and will, in all likelihood, be struck down by the Supreme Court."

GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina also support the disapproval resolution. Trump has vowed to veto it.

Trade peace in our time?

The U.S. and China are in the final stage of completing a trade deal, with Beijing offering to lower tariffs and other restrictions on American farm, chemical, auto and other products and the Trump administration considering removing most, if not all, sanctions levied against Chinese products since last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Journal's sources cautioned that hurdles remain, but a formal agreement could be reached at a summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping near the end of this month.

Poll bump

Trump's approval rating inched up to 46% vs. 52% disapproval in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The survey was completed before the failure of the Trump-Kim summit, and most of the responses were collected before Cohen's Capitol Hill testimony.

Forty-one percent of registered voters said they will “definitely” or “probably” vote for Trump in 2020, but 48% said they will “definitely” or “probably” vote for the Democratic candidate.

What else is happening:

• Nadler said Trump's reported overruling of intelligence officials to give son-in-law Jared Kushner a top security clearance was "an abuse of power." House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, on "This Week," imagined a more benign scenario: "I think the president looked at the concerns, and the president says those weren't concerns to him, so he could have him around."
• Ivanka Trump, taking a comedy turn at Washington's Gridiron dinner Saturday night, defended her comments knocking the Green New Deal. “The press seems to think it’s ironic that I, born of great privilege, think people want to work for what they are given,” she said. “As if being Donald Trump’s daughter isn’t the hardest job in the world.”
• Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo isn't ruling out running for president if former Vice President Joe Biden passes it up. “I know how to do what everybody’s talking about doing," Cuomo told The Atlantic, comparing himself to the other Democratic contenders. “If, if, if, if,” he said. “Call me when we get the fifth if.”
• Trump's CPAC speech, which lasted more than two hours, included a barnyard vulgarity to describe the investigations of him by special counsel Robert Mueller and others, a claim that some members of Congress "hate our country" and a renewal of his 25-month-old argument about the size of his inauguration crowd.
• Newly announced Democratic 2020 contender Bernie Sanders exchanged perfunctory greetings with 2016 party rival Hillary Clinton as they joined other prominent Democrats in Selma, Alabama, for the anniversary of the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march.
• The president Saturday retweeted a Trump Organization tout of one of his golf courses in Scotland with a comment that it "furthers U.K. relationship!" A court last week ruled that the Trump golf property must pay the Scottish government's legal costs after losing a battle to stop a wind turbine project that he complained spoiled the view.