One foreign policy topic that was conspicuous by its absence in the State of the Union address was North Korea. The subject was probably left out because there is nothing left for the president to say that wouldn’t be embarrassing. As if to prove just how hopeless the administration’s North Korea policy is, Robert O’Brien, the National Security Advisor, was out pushing the same tired, dishonest talking points that we have heard before:

“Chairman Kim made the commitment to denuclearize the North Korean peninsula,” VOA quoted O’Brien as saying, referring to the agreement reached between Trump and Kim at their first summit in June 2018.

“If I was in the North Korean foreign service or otherwise, I would certainly want to implement the commitment of Chairman Kim,” he continued. “Not to do so would seem to be, at a minimum, career eliminating.”

O’Brien held out hope for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

“Kim Jong-un has not lived up to the promises he made in Singapore, the commitment he made to denuclearize North Korea,” he said. “But we’re going to continue doing the hard work of diplomacy.”

O’Brien is repeating a claim that he has to know isn’t true. Kim has never committed to denuclearization. There was no agreement to denuclearize. There was a joint statement in which the two governments said that they would work towards that vaguely-defined goal that both sides could interpret in their own ways. It was very much an aspirational statement that contained no details and imposed no requirements on anyone. In fact, it was empty fluff crafted for a photo op summit so that they had something to release to the press when it was over. That wouldn’t be so terrible in itself, but the problem is that the Trump administration has spent the last year and a half lying to the public about what North Korea has agreed to. During that same time, they have been kidding themselves that North Korea has to “implement” something that they never accepted, and then when North Korea “fails” to fulfill promises they never made the administration blames the other side for the poor state of the negotiations.

The suggestion that North Korean officials are somehow defying Kim or failing to carry out Kim’s wishes is bizarre. This isn’t the first time that O’Brien has said something like this. In December of last year, he made these statements on Face the Nation:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, his ambassador to the U.N. said yesterday, ‘denuclearization is already gone out of the negotiating table’. The president seemed to nod to that in a tweet this morning. With this test and that statement, it seems an explicit recognition here that on their end, diplomacy is dead. What’s the U.S. going to do if they restart tests?

O’BRIEN: Well, I- I’d be pretty nervous if I was that ambassador, because Kim Jong Un has said publicly that he will denuclearize North Korean penin- the penin- Korean peninsula. For a North Korean ambassador to take a contrary position to the- to his leader, I think in that circumstance, is a- is a pretty dangerous thing for him to do. Look, we’ll–

MARGARET BRENNAN: North Korean diplomats don’t usually freelance. You know that.

O’BRIEN: I know- I- well, they- they- it doesn’t end well for them if they do. So I- I’m a little surprised by that comment by the- the U.N. ambassador.

On both occasions O’Brien seems to be saying that these North Korean officials are going to be purged if they don’t get with the U.S. program. The more recent line about “career eliminating” is creepy. Unfortunately for the Trump administration, Kim isn’t getting with the program, either, and repeating the empty mantra of “Kim committed to denuclearization” a thousand times won’t change that. O’Brien has committed to the absurd administration position so much that he is effectively accusing North Korean officials of working against their own leadership when they are merely conveying the position that Kim has held from the start. The Trump administration’s North Korea policy has hit a dead end, and they are desperate to conceal their failure as much as they can. However embarrassed the administration may be by the failure of their policy, their ridiculous fabrications and attempts to deceive the public are unacceptable.