Oh, that meeting with Kim that Trump was going to have? Never mind. He got excited and he didn’t mean it and it was all a misunderstanding. Next question?

South Korean official Chung Eui-yong was in the White House yesterday meeting with other officials. Trump decided to see Chung right away; maybe Fox News was in repeats or something. Trump “then asked Mr. Chung to tell him about his meeting with Mr. Kim,” reports the New York Times. “When Mr. Chung said that the North Korean leader had expressed a desire to meet Mr. Trump, the president immediately said he would do it, and directed Mr. Chung to announce it to the White House press corps.”

It sounds from this account that Trump had no real idea that North Korea has always wanted a face-to-face meeting with the U.S. president, and the U.S. has always imposed conditions. That would certainly be the logical interpretation of this account, given that, in the last week, Trump has confused North Korea with the other, extremely different South Korea, and demanded a laughably tiny $1 billion trade concession from China when he was supposed to demand $100 billion. It certainly appears Trump believed, in the moment, that North Korea had not been interested in a meeting until then, so he needed to take the deal before they changed their mind. Whatever. Art of the Deal.

Gee. It’s a little bit too bad he didn’t find out about that before immediately saying, “I’ll do it!!!” It’s a little bit too bad he has no idea about any of this.

Now the administration is backing away without admitting that’s what it’s doing.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters today Trump won’t meet with North Korea unless they offer concrete concessions beforehand:

Press Sec. Sanders on talks with North Korea: "The president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions take place by North Korea." https://t.co/phiWfrQOEU pic.twitter.com/7xHdQse21v

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 9, 2018

But that’s just the same old policy it always was.

Which means Trump shot off his mouth and got excited and then his advisers had to explain to him why he can’t do that. Or maybe they haven’t explained it to him and are backing out without his permission. Whatever the explanation, the major policy change Trump announced appears to be completely moot because he plays the president on television but isn’t really president.

Were their faces red!