Donald Trump appears to think that his attempts to meet with his counterpart in North Korea have been stymied by a lack of phone service.
Trump, 79, was asked by a reporter on Friday while aboard Air Force One whether he’s planning to travel on and meet with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un during this coming week’s diplomatic tour of Asia. Trump responded by saying he was “open to it,” but the journalist would likely have “to put out the word” for him.
“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,” he said. “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.”
It was not immediately clear why Trump—arguably the most powerful political official on the planet, who commands a diplomatic corps made up of an estimated 80,000 foreign service employees—appeared to think a member of the White House press pool would have an easier time getting word to a foreign leader of his willingness to meet next week.
North Korea’s lack of reliable communications also owes somewhat less to a widespread lack of service than the notoriously totalitarian “Hermit Kingdom” being in fact one of the most repressive regimes in the world, with mobile networks subject to stringent controls and monitoring by the country’s fearsome intelligence services.
While everyday citizens are unable to access the internet, place international calls, access foreign numbers, or even make domestic calls without the state listening in, there’s little evidence to suggest North Korea’s supreme leader may have subjected himself or members of his immediate team to the same limitations.
Pressed on what else he may be “open to” by another reporter aboard Air Force One, Trump appeared to further suggest he’d potentially be willing to formally recognise the totalitarian East Asian dictatorship as a nuclear power, something for which not even North Korea’s allies in Russia and China have expressed any appetite to date.
“Well, I think they are sort of a nuclear power,” the president said. “I mean, I know how many weapons they have. I know everything about them and I’ve had a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”
While North Korea represents a de facto nuclear-armed state, thought to possess between 40 to 60 warheads, any recognition of the country as a nuclear power under the UN-brokered 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remains firmly opposed by the 191 of the world’s 195 states to have signed the agreement—including, nominally, the United States.
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