all across the western world the so-called melting pot is melting down immigration legal and illegal is probably the most contentious and divisive issue energizing voters in germany the government may collapse and trump has made this his signature cause can the status quo be sustained. seemed wrong. but old rules just don't call. me. yet to stamp out disdain comes the attitude and engagement equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

injunction and china's easy thing get cozy and to the singapore summit what's going on take a look at that on this edition of. welcome to politicking on larry king only a week after president trump claims success in his meeting with north korean leader kim jong un and he even went so far as to say the hermit nation is no longer a nuclear threat to the world is to kim made a well publicized to china for a meeting was easy ending what do we know about that meeting and what does it mean for the agreement that came out of the signal for summit we'll talk about that with our friend gordon chang expert on asia north korea columnist for the daily beast he's the author of nuclear showdown north takes on the world he joins us from new

york all right what do you make of that meeting in china gordon wrote larry this was absolutely stunning you know after the first summit between siege and fishing and kim jong un that was the end of march everyone thought that siege and being would go to p.r. young to return the trip that just diplomatic courtesy but now we've had three times in a row the north korean leader has gone to chinese soil and this one so soon after that summit between trump and kim is really difficult to understand what's going on you know basically the chinese are saying to everybody look we control the north koreans and if you want a solution on the peninsula you've got to come to beijing now kim he actually i think says look i've got china at my back but right now this is really high politics and high drama does it appear to you he was summoned to china. absolutely larry you know the north koreans don't like the idea that they're vassals but the

chinese are. trying to reinforce that impression because this was a breach of diplomatic protocol the chinese should have returned the visit long time ago they didn't do it and so now what i'm sure the north koreans are pretty upset but there's nothing they can do about it because china is a big power they are on their border and you know they do give some benefits to the north koreans but i'm sure secretly in pyongyang they're not very happy what effect does the two hundred billion the new tariffs have on all of this. that's a great question i think it certainly complicates matters you know in the past u.s. diplomats tried to stovepipe matters with china trade on trade you know south china sea south china sea you don't use one to leverage the other but right now you know the chinese don't think that way and obviously president trump doesn't think that way i think it will complicate matters but it also may make things better because it shows the chinese that they've got to come to terms with the u.s.

you know see jumping is personally responsible for everything in china these days because he's accumulated so much power the chinese know that they can't win a trade war if the u.s. is determined to see it through and that's what see jumping in a very precarious position at home he was in trouble over the c.t.e. sanctions that's the embattled chinese telecom maker that the u.s. imposed on that company and it's very good for see personally that the u.s. gave him relief now we've got even a bigger matter that puts him in jeopardy at home does china want a denuclearization of the korean peninsula. in an ideal world i think that they would prefer that because north korea with just a few nukes does neutralize china's position you know the koreans and the chinese have been fighting with each other for two millennia but on the other hand they don't want to see north korea a friend of the united states and so i think that they would prefer north korea

with nukes if that meant that they were at a thorn in our side also we know the chinese have been supplying crucial equipment and technology for north korea's ballistic missile program and components in quitman a material for north korea's nuclear weapons program so that's an indication that china is really fueling this in a very dangerous way and denuclearization has two different definitions the united states says as north korea gives over the lives of all up north korea says u.s. troops are removed from south korea china may have its own definition of what they were what is your definition well my definition is that the north koreans give up not only all their nuclear weapons they just surrender them but they also dismantle the infrastructure used to create them and it also means ballistic missiles same thing because of the blister missiles are a threat to everybody both long and term long and short range so really this means

defending north korea completely but as you point out the chinese and the north koreans they they view the target area differently what does north korea want in return if they do that. well they very much want the u.s. off the peninsula our twenty eight thousand five hundred service personnel away break our mutual defense treaty with south korea they would like in all possible worlds for us to get out of japan as well and you know the north koreans in the past have actually defined denuclearization of the korean peninsula to include the u.s. giving up all its nuclear weapons as well so north korea has a very broad definition of that term you recently wrote in the daily beast a piece in titled is trump heading back to fire and fury with conjunction we mean well i think that although things are sweetness and light right now and although president trump says these nice things about kim jong un and says north korea is no

longer a threat to the world i think the north koreans are going to take a very long time to drag out their feet on all of this and i think that essentially this is going to upset americans and so i could see the united states getting back to the point where they have to use harsh rhetoric and also harsh provisions like increasing sanctions so this i think is going to get worse before it gets better president trump can weigh much too much at that summit it's given incentives for kim not to cooperate with the united states so i don't think kim will cooperate he's going to try to get away with it and now he's got china at his back he probably has russia at his back this is going to be high stakes drama and the united states is going to have to go back to more sanctions more rhetoric in other words the things that got him to the bargaining table in the first place didn't you say that you thought trump had won that initially and then gave it away. yes well i think that if you look through the middle through the end of last month the north

koreans were making all the concessions president trump was very much in the driver's seat but when it came to this month i think the north koreans have been the ones. scoring all the wins because at that summit of the north koreans came up with a joint statement which was very vague you know president trump should have used that summit as a way of getting firm commitments from north korea because just by shaking hands with kim we handed kim a very big when we handed him legitimization that solidified his shaky position back home we should have gotten something in return we really didn't and top of all that just trump incredibly says look we're not going to have these big large scale joint exercises with the south koreans that was an enormous win for the north koreans and for the chinese and you know i'm still scratching my head over that one gordon is always thanks so much for your time both thank you larry american one

nine hundred sixty eight was a year of assassinations deep divisions and good mornings about black white relationships a presidential candidate came on the scene and focused many of his campaign speeches on healing those racial divisions we'll never know if he might have succeeded because he was brought down by an assassin's bullets of course i'm referring to robert f. kennedy his son bobby jr has a new book out about his father and his famous family and we recently spoke about that and about today's to mull to us political landscape the book is entitled american values lessons i learned from my family here is that interview what's your wonderful father bobby kennedy was assassinated fifty years ago. are we more or less divided now than in sixty eight when you were just a little kid. i think the eight divisions an arm or systemic. because

economically. i think one of the big things that happened as a country. is are these giant between rich and poor or the hollowing out the middle class. and and the the giant tsunami influx of money and politics and the effect and it's something that i. i you know i spent a lot of child of america and one i was in there almost all of those were military and this is. characterized by a big gap between rich and poor and when that happens the role of one political party becomes to protect the perks and privileges that the wealthy class and. in order to do that you have to pull or as

a population you have to use all of the alchemy is demagoguery to point to people who are the enemy and polarizers and so i think you know there were issues that divide us in the sixty's drugs that was going on that was civil rights. were genuine disputes about idiology and they weren't really rooted in class divisions i think they become much more intractable when they're rooted in class divisions would you say it's worse now you know i would. marry a family the kennedy family given so much been a part of the american scene for so long do you think you were raised with an idea of service. all of that public service you know it was all it was all around because you were you know what you were. as i talk about the book

we were in the immersed in political campaigns we were surrounded by people who were all driven. i purposed i had a sense of purpose i did i made a trip and i nine hundred sixty five with my father to europe and we went to france and germany and griese and england and we went to we went to italy and to poland which was then a communist country. where we were disinvited we don't want you here and we went anyway and the government blacked out our trip so there was no mention of it on the news as in fact we went to an orphanage with presents for the orphanage for the orphans and all the orphans were moved there by the government because they didn't want to have any contact with the people of the us through word of mouth the they the knowledge of our presence. and when we went to the cathedral and crack out

for mass we came out there were two hundred fifty thousand people in the air in krakow square and any of them had somehow got a hold of these little tiny american flags and waving at us and they were saying they lifted our car literally sang this song called stole a lot which poles only sung to their most popular heroes and leaders and ever been sung by a crowd in the communist era. and was ever a deliberative and you know a lot of those kind of crowds in every country and to comment as an uncommon for people it was very clear to me that people were hungry for our leadership. and they recognized america's moral authority they wanted they wanted to our leadership and knew the difference between leadership and bowling but kennedy's a raise with that. i'm not well and what i'm saying is it was all around us in of that and it was a privilege to lead a purposeful life. and i think you know my

a lot of people i say to mail out you know are you doing environmental advocacy as in what your father taught it is service to me it is a privilege it is to live that kind of life and to be in those fistfights every day to do something you know to try to. make something benefit and the world stay right there more of my interview with robert kennedy jr after the break.