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Harris, the former commander of US Pacific Command, was appointed Ambassador to Australia until Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested to the President that Harris be appointed to the open position. in Seoul before the June 12 summit between Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un told CNN at the time.
Trump's previous choice for this post, Victor Cha, was dropped in January following a disagreement over the White House's review of a preemptive strike against North Korea.
Now, Harris must help Pompeo to facilitate the next step in the talks with Pyongyang – who, despite Trump's assertion to the contrary, remains a nuclear threat, according to the state secretary's testimony on Capitol Hill this week.
At his confirmation hearing at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month, Harris also stated that North Korea continues to be a nuclear threat and advocated that major military exercises be suspended for give Kim a chance to prove a recommendation that Trump has finally taken to heart.
During his tenure at the Pacific, Harris did not mince words about North Korea's ambitions.
US forces in the Pacific "must be ready to fight tonight, so I take it at the word," he said last year about Kim's intentions. "I have to assume that his claims are true – I know his aspirations certainly are."
But throughout his confirmation process, Harris took a different tone.
"After the summit, we are in a radically different place," Harris told legislators. "The whole landscape has changed, I think we should do exercises, major exercises, a break to see if Kim Jong Un is serious in his part of the negotiations."
He added: "I have spoken in the past of the need to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses and not to his knees."
The Singapore Summit "was not designed to solve all the problems at once But to be a starting point for starting serious negotiations," Harris meant "to establish the terms of what it means a verifiable and complete irreversible denuclearization and how we are going to go about it. "
