THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And neither side is explaining why the talks ended earlier but, as usual, the Trumpoons are saying that things are going well. Or at least as well as they can when one side demands everything and offers nothing.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a senior North Korean official ended two days of talks Thursday with no immediate announcement that a canceled summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump is back on.

The State Department said Pompeo and Kim Yong Chol, the right-hand man to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, abruptly concluded their meetings before noon, roughly 90 minutes earlier than expected.

A State Department official said the schedule change was not the result of an impasse in efforts to set the agenda for a reinstated leader summit in Singapore next month, but provided no details of what had been accomplished.

“The secretary’s meeting ended early as a result of the parties making progress and the meeting going well,” the official said.

Trump canceled the planned summit last week, blaming “hostility” from North Korea, and U.S. officials said Pyongyang had been uncooperative in finalizing the details. A flurry of diplomacy has followed to put the meeting back on track, including the extraordinary scene of the American secretary of state welcoming an accused North Korean spy chief to two days of meetings over tea in a luxury Manhattan apartment.

“Substantive talks with the team from #NorthKorea. We discussed our priorities for the potential summit between our leaders,” he wrote.

Kim is the most senior North Korean to visit the United States in almost two decades. He sat down with Pompeo at 9:05 a.m. in the government-leased residence of the deputy head of the U.S. mission to the United Nations two short blocks away.

Pompeo was accompanied by two North Korea experts and an interpreter. Kim and his unidentified aides, two men and a woman, sat facing a curved window with a sweeping view of the East River and Lower Manhattan.

Pompeo and Kim were smiling but silent as they prepared to hold talks over tea at the same table where they shared a private dinner Wednesday night. Both men ignored questions shouted by journalists allowed in to witness them shaking hands and sitting down to start their delicate discussions that could seal, or sink, the chances of a June 12 summit.

Move along now, nothing to see here everything is just dandy.