When three Americans freed from prison in North Korea touch down at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington around 2 a.m. Thursday, President Trump intends to be on the moonlit tarmac to greet them, with the full White House press corps in tow.

It will be a cinematic homecoming produced by a president impatient to trumpet a foreign-policy triumph — and a prelude to the most anticipated tête-à-tête in years: Trump’s planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

By making brash and risky moves on the world stage — from shredding the Iran nuclear deal to negotiating nuclear disarmament with the North Koreans to imposing tariffs on Chinese imports — Trump has a chance to change the way voters evaluate his presidency.

Trump is trying to convince Americans that they have good reasons — not only foreign-policy advances, but also a growing economy — to protect his presidency from the threats posed by the Russia investigation, not to mention impeachment charges that Democrats might file next year should they retake control of the House in the midterm elections.

For Trump, each bold stroke is like a spritz of Febreze on his narrative of domestic scandal, momentarily masking the expanding Russia probe of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Or the federal criminal investigation into his longtime attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen.

Or his reimbursement of the $130,000 hush-money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.

Or his support for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt despite an avalanche of ethical lapses.

“Most of the coverage gets dominated by ping-pong-ball-sized issues, which are hurled through the air, but it misses the bigger point of the Trump presidency,” said Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Trump booster, arguing that foreign-policy breakthroughs would be more resonant with voters than Russian collusion or obstruction of justice.

[Trump’s trust in his gut-driven, out-of-the-box approach to international relations grows]

To that point, when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked last week whether Trump would rather sit down with Kim or Mueller, her answer was unequivocal.

“I certainly think that the president feels like stopping a nuclear war and helping protect the safety and security of people across the globe would certainly be the number one priority of the president of the United States, and certainly, I would think, would be the priority that most Americans would share,” Sanders said.

As Trump discussed the North Korean breakthrough at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, a reporter asked, “Do you deserve the Nobel [Peace] Prize?”

“Everyone thinks so,” the president replied, with characteristic embellishment, “but I would never say it.”

The Nobel Peace Prize.

Letting that sink in is precisely what Trump wants — especially as he leads embattled Republicans into November’s midterm elections, where they are forecast to lose seats and possibly their majorities in one or both houses of Congress.

“These events absolutely can make a difference,” said former New York congressman Thomas M. Reynolds, a GOP strategist. “There’s certainly people that say his approach to doing stuff isn’t necessarily how I am comfortable, just watching it or knowing it, but he seems to be getting it done.”

Democrats have a different interpretation.

“If he wanted to drown out domestic scandals, he’d have to stop having so many domestic scandals and so many self-inflicted wounds,” Democratic pollster Margie Omero said. “That kind of recklessness makes it hard to separate Trump’s day-to-day demeanor from his international performance.”

Trump is not the first president to focus on foreign policy in a period of personal political crisis. As the Watergate investigation intensified in 1973, President Richard Nixon tried to play up his role as commander in chief.

“Nixon tried to make the point that you Americans may be upset by my scandal, but I am doing such important things in foreign policy that you should think twice before wanting to throw me out,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss said.

What was expected to be explosive Senate testimony by White House counsel John Dean that summer had to be delayed because Nixon was welcoming Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to the United States for a summit. And later that year, after Nixon ordered the firing of a number of Justice Department officials in what became known as “the Saturday Night Massacre,” he opened a news conference not by defending his actions to intervene in the Watergate investigation but by updating Americans on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“The tougher it gets, the cooler I get,” Nixon told reporters.

[The Fix: Stormy Daniels is proving to be a bigger problem than Trump could have imagined]

Trump’s approval rating stood at 40 percent in a Washington Post-ABC News poll in mid-April, slightly more than his 36 percent approval rating in January and his highest level in Post-ABC polling since his first 100 days in office.

The April poll found that over half of all Americans, 56 percent, disapprove of Trump’s overall performance. But a clear majority of those surveyed, 56 percent, said they believe Trump should hold his summit meeting with Kim to try to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons; 36 percent said he should not.

“The proof is in the pudding,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who has been critical of Trump. But, he added, “We know that most Americans simply do not care about so much of the drama that consumes the Beltway. It’s all a matter of what results are produced.”

Trump has vented his frustrations privately to advisers as well as in public statements that he is not given what he considers due credit in news coverage and in public opinion polls for what he sees as foreign policy and economic successes.

On Wednesday morning, just an hour before announcing the release of North Korean prisoners, Trump castigated the media and threatened to revoke journalists’ White House credentials. “The Fake News is working overtime,” Trump wrote in a tweet, complaining that “despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake).”

To shape coverage, Trump has taken personal control over the North Korean prisoner story, directing it with the showman instincts that helped make his reality television show, “The Apprentice,” a ratings success.

It was the president who announced dramatically on Tuesday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was en route to Pyongyang to meet with Kim and possible secure the release of the three detainees. It was the president who revealed Wednesday morning — “I am pleased to inform you . . .,” he tweeted — that they were en route home to the United States with Pompeo and in good health. And it is the president who plans to depart the White House in the middle of the night to meet their returning aircraft at Andrews.

“It’ll be 2 o’clock in the morning,” Trump said at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting. “It’ll be quite a scene.”

[‘Stay tuned!’ Trump and advisers treat fate of North Korea prisoners as a cliffhanger]

The high-suspense approach extends to his summit with Kim, the details of which Trump has kept closely held. The president said he had picked a time and location for the meeting, and added that the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea had been ruled out.

“As I always say, ‘Who knows?’” Trump said. “Who knows what’s going to happen. But it’s going to be a very important event.”

The approach is a marked departure from past presidents such as Barack Obama, who oversaw several North Korea prisoner releases but did not stage them as elaborately as Trump is doing this week.

There are inherent risks in Trump’s foreign policy, of course. He abruptly withdrew from the Iran deal without an apparent alternative plan to contain the rogue state’s nuclear program, which experts said risks war in the region. And his overtures to Kim could easily be stymied. “Everything can be scuttled,” Trump acknowledged.

Ian Bremmer, a foreign policy expert and the founder and president of Eurasia Group, said there is high potential for Trump to misstep in foreign policy considering his lack of traditional experience.

“If you have the biggest stack of chips at the poker table, you can get a whole bunch of people to fold against you, all the time,” Bremmer said. “That’s what Trump has done with the North Koreans, with the South Koreans, all over the world. But eventually your bluff is going to be called. That strategy works very well until it doesn’t, and at some point Trump’s number of wins may lead to a big loss.”

Then there is the possibility that no number of wins in foreign policy could compensate for destructive developments at home. One year after trying to focus on the Soviet Union and the Middle East, Nixon resigned under the threat of impeachment.

“There is no example in history where accomplishments like that save a president who is otherwise in dire trouble,” Beschloss said. “They may help him, but not save him.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was traveling to North Korea on Tuesday in preparation for an upcoming summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump disclosed the trip, which was not announced ahead of time by the State Department, during remarks Tuesday at the White House on his intention to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal.

The news about Pompeo came as anticipation is building over the planned summit to discuss the Kim regime’s nuclear weapons program that could take place by the end of June.

“Plans are being made, relationships are building,” Trump said. “Hopefully, a deal will happen and with the help of China, South Korea and Japan a future of great prosperity and security can be achieved for everybody.”

Trump made no mention, however, of the three American prisoners in North Korea. Two people with knowledge of the trip told The Washington Post that Pompeo was expected to bring them home.

“We’ll all soon be finding out,” Trump replied after a reporter asked him about the prisoners.

Warmbier’s parents have sued North Korea in federal court, charging that the regime “brutally tortured and murdered” their son. Trump spoke with the family on Friday to offer support ahead of his summit, sources said.

Nakamura reported from Washington.

ISTANBUL — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that his government remains committed to a nuclear deal with world powers, despite a decision by the United States to withdraw from the accord, but is also ready to step up its uranium enrichment.

Rouhani, who spoke following President Trump’s speech announcing the U.S. withdrawal, said he has directed Iranian diplomats to negotiate with the deal’s remaining signatories, including European countries, Russia and China.

But he also warned that Iran would resume enriching uranium at higher levels if the benefits of remaining a part of the pact were unclear.

“If in the short-term, we conclude that we can achieve what we want” from the nuclear deal, the agreement will survive, Rouhani said in a televised address.

If not, he continued, “I have asked [Iran’s] Atomic Energy Organization to prepare the necessary orders to start unlimited enrichment,” which had been curtailed as part of the deal.

Trump, a longtime critic of the 2015 agreement, announced his decision on the deal from the White House, abandoning the landmark accord that was signed under President Barack Obama.

“The United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said in a televised speech. He called it “a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” and he asserted that Iran harbors ambitions to build nuclear weapons.

Trump said he would begin reinstating “powerful” U.S. nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. But he offered no specifics on the sanctions to be reimposed.

The decision could trigger renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil sales and Central Bank, potentially disrupting Iran’s global financial transactions and putting further pressure on its already volatile economy. It also could put European allies in a bind over whether to continue the economic dealmaking they launched with Iran since the accord was implemented in early 2016. The allies have stood firmly behind the accord, which was negotiated between Iran and six world powers: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

The allies could also suffer penalties under renewed U.S. sanctions, removing incentives to continue to invest in Iran.

In his speech, Trump also accused Iran of destabilizing the Middle East through its support of militant groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and he charged that Tehran seeks to build “nuclear-capable” ballistic missiles.

“If I allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” Trump asserted. “We cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” he added. “The Iran deal is defective at its core.”

As part of the nuclear deal, Iran pledged never to “seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” Iran’s supreme religious and political leader has declared nuclear weapons to be un-Islamic, saying that its nuclear program is aimed solely at producing energy and conducting medical research.

Iranian leaders said Tuesday that the country would stand united in the face of any new sanctions or threats from the United States.

Iran “could face some problems” if Trump restores sanctions, Rouhani said at a petroleum conference in the capital, Tehran, before Trump announced his decision. “But we will move on.”

“If we are under sanctions or not, we should stand on our feet,” the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

Rouhani’s first vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, said the government has “a plan for managing the country under any circumstances.”

In remarks reported by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, Jahangiri, a popular reformist, said it would be “naive” to enter into negotiations with the United States again.

The comments underscored a growing debate among political factions in Iran over what to do ifafter the U.S. withdrawal. Some politicians have urged the government to continue to work with Europe to salvage the accord, which lifted key international sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.

“If the Europeans are willing to give us sufficient guarantees, it makes sense for us to stay in the deal,” the deputy speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Motahari, said in remarks carried by theIranian Students’ News Agency.

Motahari said Iran should wait several months to see whether Europe plans to resist U.S. pressure to disengage from the Iranian economy, where European companies have invested in sectors ranging from auto manufacturing to oil exploration and tourism.

If Europe succeeds, “this is a victory for Iran, because it will have created a gap between the United States and Europe,” he said.

But others have been less forgiving, urging Iran’s leaders to immediately withdraw and restart suspended elements of the country’s nuclear program if the United States left the deal. Fliers circulating online called for a rally in Iran’s northeastern city of Mashhad to “set the JCPOA on fire.” The nuclear deal is also known as the JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The Iranian parliament’s Nuclear Committee published three actions that the government could take if Trump leaves the deal, including installing more centrifuges and enriching uranium beyond the levels allowed under the accord. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants or — if enriched at much higher levels — as fissile material for nuclear weapons.

If Trump confronts Iran, “we will not remain passive,” the head of the National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said Tuesday in an interview with the Hamshahri newspaper.

He said Europe made a mistake when its leaders appeased Trump by attempting to extract further concessions from Iran, including a potential halt to its ballistic missile program. The nuclear deal was the result of painstaking negotiations over two years between the Rouhani administration and the world powers, including the Obama administration.

While Iran accepted severe limits to its nuclear program, including inspections, critics said the deal failed to address other problematic aspects of Iranian policy, including its missile development and support for militant groups in Iraq and Syria.

“The Islamic Republic will stand firmly against this threat,” Shamkhani said of the Trump administration’s stance.

Even as Iranian leaders vowed to weather the storm, Iran’s economy was already feeling the strain. Iran’s Central Bank governor, Valiollah Seif, downplayed any potential shock to Iranian markets, which have been roiled by high inflation and a collapsing currency.

“We are prepared for all scenarios,” Seif said on state television. “If America pulls out of the deal, our economy will not be impacted.”

Butthe Iranian rial was trading Tuesday at near record lows against the dollar, as Iranians looked to buy hard currency ahead of Trump’s announcement, economists said.

According to Pratibha Thaker, an Iran expert at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a risk analysis group, Trump’s withdrawal from the pact would accelerate regional insecurity, cause a dip in global oil supplies and plunge the Iranian economy into recession.

“Anxiety, stress . . . [these are] people’s feelings just hours before Mr. Trump’s extraordinary decision,” an Iranian journalist, Amine Sherifkan, posted on Twitter.

Worsening economic woes could spell trouble for Rouhani, a moderate cleric who championed the nuclear deal as a way to jump-start Iran’s economy and end the country’s isolation.

Rouhani staked much of his political credibility on the nuclear deal with world powers. But even as oil exports picked up in the wake of the agreement, ordinary Iranians have said they felt few tangible benefits from the accord.

Widespread economic unrest, currency fluctuations and a recent judicial ban on the popular messaging app, Telegram, have all weakened the president, analysts said. A collapse of the nuclear pact could weaken Rouhani further, giving room for hard-line opponents of the accord to exert more influence.

“Rouhani is already under huge pressure,” said Saeid Hasanzadeh, an Iranian analyst based in Istanbul.

He said that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate religious and political authority in Iran, has distanced himself enough from the nuclear deal that its failure would be blamed on Rouhani.

The supreme leader “did not take direct responsibility for the deal,” Hasanzadeh said. “So the responsibility falls entirely on Rouhani’s shoulders.”

Bijan Sabbagh in Istanbul and William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.

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