Trump says he intends to meet Kim Jong Un this year
By Kevin Liptak, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he intends to meet later this year with Kim Jong Un, claiming he gets along well with the North Korean leader.
“Yeah, I will,” Trump said when asked whether he planned in-person talks with Kim, with whom Trump claimed to have a great relationship.
“I get along with him. And you know what? The fact that I get along with him — that’s a good thing,” he said.
It’s not clear how concrete Trump’s plans are for a fourth summit with Kim, with whom he met during his first term. Trump wouldn’t say Wednesday whether he’d exchanged any letters with the North Korean ruler.
Attempts last year to broker a summit with Kim during Trump’s visit to Asia fell through, in part due to the logistical issues of arranging a meeting on short notice.
But the US president has spent the past two days working to curry favor with Pyongyang, including by cutting short planned US-South Korea military exercises and posting a photo of his 2019 meeting with Kim at the inter-Korean demilitarized zone.
And White House officials have eyed upcoming travel to Asia for a leaders summit in November as a potential opportunity to rekindle direct diplomacy, according to a US official.
How an in-person meeting this year would accomplish what three previous meetings could not isn’t clear. Trump emerged from those three encounters — the last of which included a short jaunt into North Korean territory — mostly empty handed, and North Korea accelerated its production of nuclear weapons.
Trump mostly shrugged off the nuclear arsenal North Korea has been amassing, which he said stood at 57 weapons. That is in line with publicly available estimates, though more specific. The US president suggested it was the fault of previous presidents; the North Korean leader has said recently he intends to beef up the country’s nuclear forces.
“If I were I president I wouldn’t have allowed it,” Trump said.
He said his personal relationship with Kim — forged, apparently, over the roughly eight hours they spent together in his first term — would be enough to contain North Korea’s bad behavior.
“I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he’s going to be fine as long as we have a smart president,” Trump said. “He’s going to be fine. If we have a dumb president, then he’s probably not going to be so fine.”
The-CNN-Wire
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