Pence to brief House GOP leaders on North Korea summit

Vice President Pence will brief House Republican leaders on Tuesday’s historic summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to a GOP aide.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) are both expected to attend the briefing with Pence, which is scheduled for Tuesday in the Capitol.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is also supposed to have a conversation with Pence, who briefed GOP senators during an off-campus lunch at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) earlier in the day.

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Following Tuesday’s summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim signed a document committing the United States to unspecified “security guarantees” in exchange for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

The document does not elaborate on what steps the United States will take to guarantee North Korea’s security, nor does it lay out the steps North Korea will need to take to denuclearize.

Republican senators said Tuesday that they want the Trump administration to submit any final deal between the United States and North Korea to Congress for a vote.

Trump also announced a decision to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea, which appeared to surprise military officials and raised eyebrows among some Republicans.

“I don’t think that’s wise because we have done these exercises for years,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa), a key Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I would just ask the president, ‘Why do we need to suspend them? They are legal.’ ”

A Pentagon spokeswoman told CNN that Defense Secretary James Mattis had been consulted on Trump’s announcement and “was not surprised.”

“The secretary is in full alignment with the president to meet his goal which is denuclearization of the peninsula,” Pentagon chief spokeswoman Dana White said.