2024-01-15 03:06:21
Former President Donald Trump, who is running for re-election in the U.S. presidential election in November, said of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, “very smart and tough,” at a campaign rally the day before the Republican Iowa caucuses, the first U.S. presidential primary. . He put the summit meeting with Kim Jong-un as his ‘diplomatic achievements’ and claimed that “the United States was safe (thanks to the relationship with Kim Jong-un).”
“Kim Jong-un is very smart and tough,” former U.S. President Donald Trump said during a speech at the Simpson College Auditorium in Indianola, Iowa on the 14th (local time). “He liked me, and I got along very well with him. “We were safe.” /C-SPAN
“I negotiated with some of the toughest leaders in the world,” Trump said at a rally held at the Simpson University Auditorium in Indianola, Iowa, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un in turn. Among them, he mentioned Kim Jong-un again and said, “He liked me, and I got along well with him,” and “(Thanks to him) we were safe.” Trump met with Kim Jong-un three times during his time in office (2017-2021). Even after leaving office, he continued to claim that he prevented a nuclear war with North Korea through ‘top-down’ diplomacy with Kim Jong-un. However, the relationship between the US and North Korea became seriously strained after the ‘Hanoi No Deal’, in which Trump and Kim Jong-un held a summit in Hanoi, Vietnam in February 2019, which broke down without result. At the time, there was continued talk around the Trump administration that the United States was pursuing a plan to ease economic sanctions against North Korea by freezing North Korea’s nuclear program. The goal of the denuclearization negotiations could be lowered from ‘CVID’ (complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization) to a nuclear freeze. On this day, Trump only emphasized his meeting with Kim Jong-un without mentioning this context. Trump also did not mention North Korea’s ballistic missile provocation from the Pyongyang area to the East Sea the day before.
Former U.S. President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un greeting him as he crosses north of the Military Demarcation Line from Panmunjom in June 2019. /AFP Yonhap News
“We were going to go to war with them,” Trump said, adding, “They have a large nuclear arsenal, probably more than anyone else.” “We did a great job,” he said. It was interpreted as an attempt to emphasize that, unlike incumbent President Joe Biden, he is the one who can respond to the North Korean nuclear threat. He also mentioned Kim Jong-un at a campaign rally last month in Cedar Rapids, outside eastern Iowa, saying, “For the four years (when I was president), you never had any problems with North Korea or anything,” and “But he (Biden) said in two sentences: They are negotiating a nuclear package with Kim Jong-un without being able to unite. “He (Kim Jong-un) won’t even talk to him (Biden).”
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