President Donald Trump believes that his friendship with North Korea’s dictator Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un helped prevent war from breaking out.
The 79-year-old president boasted that his mere presence in the White House would be enough.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One after leaving South Korea, he said, “I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un. I think if I didn’t get elected, you would have had… if Hillary Clinton came in at the time, who he doesn’t like, he doesn’t like too many people other than me, if you want to know the truth, I think you would have had a a big war. Could have been a very bad war, too,” Trump said.
Trump had also floated the idea of extra time in Asia to speak with the North Korean. “We were never able to talk because… look, I was so busy,” he added.
“I think it would have been maybe disrespectful to the importance of this meeting if we did that. So I’d come back, with respect to Kim Jong Un.”
In South Korea, the president met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and discussed a potential trade deal between the U.S. and China.
Minutes before the U.S.-China summit, Trump has instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to resume testing of America’s nuclear weapons—ending a 33-year moratorium.
Trump had previously said he would “love” to extend his time in Asia to see Kim, telling reporters, “If he’d like to meet, I’m around. I got along great with Kim Jong Un.”
He also said that journalists would have to “put out the word” about his interest in a potential meeting, claiming that the North Korean leader doesn’t have telephone service.
“You know, they don’t have a lot of telephone service. They have a lot of nuclear weapons, but not a lot of telephone service,” the president told reporters on Friday.
“I’m open to it, I had a great relationship with him. He probably knows I’m coming. But… you wanna put out the word… I’m open to it… There’s not a lot of ways other than the internet, you know, they have very little telephonic service.”
The president last met with the North Korean leader in 2019, when he became the first sitting U.S. president to step foot on North Korean soil. Their historic summits failed to yield a breakthrough on the issue of North Korea abandoning its nuclear arsenal.
In a stunning about-face, Trump signaled his openness to formally recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power while speaking to reporters on Friday.
Doing so would make the U.S. the first country to recognize North Korea as such, ahead of the country’s close allies Russia and China. It would also be in contravention of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which the U.S. is a signatory.
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