From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbarale. This is The Daily.

Today, the time and place for a historic meeting between the President of the United States and the leader of North Korea have been set.

Does President Trump get credit for the diplomatic breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula?

It's Monday, May 14.

This is a Fox News Lert North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has proposed a face-to-face meeting with President Trump about his country's nuclear weapons program.

And President Trump said yes. It would be the first face-to-face encounter between any leaders of those two countries.

Wow, we thought this would go forward in baby steps. It's not. It's going in huge leaps.

I mean, nobody thought that anything like this could ever happen unless it was under the most extraordinary of circumstances.

President Trump tweeted, we will both try to make it a very special moment for world peace.

Nick, the last time that we talked to you on the daily, you had just gotten back from North Korea.

And you described a new level of menace in the air there that you hadn't felt before in your previous visits.

President Trump at that moment was issuing explicit threats against North Korea and conflict you told us seemed quite imminent.

But here we are a little more than six months later.

And the United States and North Korea are on the verge of this historic summit with both sides saying that peace could be on the table in those talks.

So what happened?

I'm like, a last time I was all kind of doom and gloom and now it's all sweetness and light, which slightly undermines my credibility as a North Korea forecaster.

Nick Kristoff has repeatedly traveled to North Korea for the times.

Here's what I think happened. I think that President Trump made these very explicit threats that were meant to intimidate North Korea.

The United States has great strength and patience. But if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.

And they probably had some impact along that way.

From North Korea, a unique threat and from Kim Jong-un, a first message in English,

vowing to make President Trump, quote, pay dearly, calling him a mentally deranged do-tard or senile old man for threatening to destroy North Korea in his UN speech Tuesday.

...