Conservative political strategist Jeffrey Lord cautioned Tuesday "we're a long ways from done" on whether North Korea becomes denuclearized, emphasizing to Newsmax TV that former President Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify" manta was most critical now.
"Ronald Reagan used to talk endlessly, to the irritation of Mikhail Gorbachev, about trust but verify, which was a Russian expression," Lord, who served under the Republican president, told "Newsmax Now" host John Bachman.
"That, in essence, is what is going on here. That's number one."
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Lord noted Reagan walked out of the 1986 summit in Reykjavík, Iceland, with Gorbachev, the Communist Party's general secretary, in a dispute over the U.S. ending research on the Strategic Defense Initiative, which involved the militarization of outer space.
Reagan "absolutely refused to do that and said, 'Well, I guess we have nothing else to talk about' — and then got up and walked out," Lord told Bachman.
"Peace through strength is critical."
He added North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un could face a similar fate as former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was deposed in 1964 by rival Kremlin leaders, for his meeting with President Trump.
"Kim has got to be awful careful of people in his own back yard who may not like what they saw this weekend."
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