Are you surprised?

Comparisons to the Agreed Framework and the Six-Way Talks seem to grow more apt by the day:

North Korea slammed what it called the United States' "gangster-like mindset" in denuclearization talks just hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the high-level negotiations as "productive" and insisted progress was made.

"We had many hours of productive conversations," Pompeo told reporters Saturday in Pyongyang before boarding a flight to Tokyo. "These are complicated issues, but we've made progress on almost all the central issues. Some places, a great deal of progress. Other places, there's still more work to be done." 

North Korea, however, poured cold water on the talks, saying the "attitude" of the US was "regrettable" and not in the spirit of the June 12 summit in Singapore between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 

"We expected the US to bring constructive measures to build confidence in accordance with the spirit of the US-NK Summit," the statement carried by state-run news agency KCNA said, according to a CNN translation of the Korean version of the statement. "However, the attitude of the US in the first high-level talks held on the 6th and 7th were indeed regrettable."

The statement added, according to an English-language version of the statement released by KCNA: "The US is fatally mistaken if it went to the extent of regarding that the (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) would be compelled to accept, out of its patience, the demands reflecting its gangster-like mindset."

The country called the outcome of the discussion "worrisome" and argued that the "cancerous issues" the US delegation raised were the same ones that had "amplified" distrust and the risk of war with past administrations, resulting in previous talks ending in failure.

Trump just plain jumped the gun. The whole thing was handled ass-backwards. If you want to have a summit with Kim - an ill-advised idea under any circumstances and in any administration - you start with much lower-level contacts and make clear what it's all going to lead up to. Yes, such an approach is going to fall apart long before any summit, but at least there's no "forward movement" based on vague assurances and impossibly broadly stated goals.

Pompeo probably made way too clear for North Korea's comfort what the U.S. position is: North Korea gives up its nuclear program and its missile inventory and then maybe we talk about community-of-nations and economic-cooperation stuff.

But his boss, as he has throughout his real-estate and brand-hustling careers, had this idea that both sides in any negotiation have an it's-just-business mindset in which nothing is taken personally - or, in the case of a nation, the cultural and national-purpose levels are as up for bargaining as anything else on the table. Trump is used to situations in which, no matter how raw a relationship is rubbed, no matter how many insults are hurled, no matter how the bargain raises the stakes unacceptably to the other side, a "master deal-maker" can get to a bottom line that holds.

None of this is to say that the position held by Pompeo, Bolton and their staffs is wrong. On the contrary, it's exactly right. It appealed to the Very Stable Genius because it was "tough," and because, by golly, nobody does tough like Donald Trump, getting to a truly denuclearized North Korea was basically going to be a walk in the park.

So, for his own narcissistic reasons, Trump entered into the same folly that his three predecessors did for their own particular reasons.

But each time hopes are ramped up and then the effort deteriorates, the danger level ratchets up a bit more.

Memo to Trump and indeed anybody considering some historic, visionary engagement with North Korea: Forget it. Just treat it like the mortal enemy it's going to be as long as it exists.