Trump teases potential Kim Jong Un meeting later this year
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he expects to meet with dictator Kim Jong Un “later this year,” signaling ongoing direct diplomacy with Pyongyang despite a direct denial by North Korea.
“I get along with him very well,” Trump told reporters during an impromptu White House construction walkthrough, adding, “I expected to meet with him later this year. Yeah, I will be.”
North Korea rejected the suggestion of the two leaders meeting.
“The relationship between the two leaders remains excellent,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the North Korean leader, wrote in a statement, according to state media KCNA. “However, the U.S.’s hostile policies toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea haven’t changed.”
Trump declined to say whether he had exchanged letters with Kim, telling a reporter, “Can’t tell you that.”
The president repeatedly pointed to his personal relationship with the North Korean leader as an asset, calling Kim a “very powerful player” and saying their ability to get along was “a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Trump did not provide a date or location for the potential meeting.
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During Trump’s first term, Kim called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” and threatened that he had use of a “nuclear button” on his desk. The leaders’ relationship cooled after face-to-face meetings in 2018 and 2019, including a brief exchange at the demilitarized zone between the Koreas in which Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to step into North Korean territory.
“I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he’s going to be fine as long as we have a smart president,” Trump told reporters during Wednesday’s tour of the helipad he is constructing on the White House’s south lawn.
“If we have a dumb president, then he’s probably not going to be so fine.”
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Trump did note it was a mistake to allow Kim’s North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons.
“He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons,” Trump said. “They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But he’s got them.”
There have been varying estimates by experts over the years on how many nuclear weapons North Korea has. In June, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that North Korea has “possibly assembled around 60 warheads, possesses enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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