‘I’m still trying to kill you’: Mike Pompeo told Kim Jong Un during secret 2018 meeting
Ryan King
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North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un tried to break the ice with Mike Pompeo by joking about the then-CIA director’s efforts to “kill” him during an intense 2018 Easter weekend secret meeting.
Pompeo was taken aback by the quip and quickly assured the notorious dictator to his face with a “little humor” of his own that he was indeed trying to kill him. That move drew a smile from the dictator, according to Pompeo’s upcoming memoir, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love.
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“This small, sweating, evil man tried to break the ice with all the charm you would expect from a mass murderer. ‘Mr. Director,’ he opened, ‘I didn’t think you’d show up. I know you’ve been trying to kill me,’” an excerpt of the book obtained by Fox News recounted.
“I decided to lean in with a little humor of my own: ‘Mr. Chairman, I’m still trying [to] kill you.’ In the picture taken seconds after that exchange, Kim is still smiling. He seemed confident that I was kidding,” Pompeo added in his book.
After a bitter exchange of nicknames and threats of nuclear war during the first year of his presidency, relations between Kim and former President Donald Trump cooled off in mid-2018, and the two eventually met for a summit in Singapore. Pompeo, who later became Trump’s secretary of state, earned a reputation for utilizing a more assertive approach to foreign policy.
Pompeo explained that the secret mission “to one of the darkest places on earth” began on March 30, 2018, before the Singapore summit, and was intended to remedy “the failed efforts of the past that had not eliminated North Korea’s nuclear weapons of mass destruction.”
Although his onetime boss has since boasted about the Singapore summit and took his “love letters” with Kim to his Mar-a-Lago resort following his White House departure, Pompeo seemed less enthused with Kim. The feeling appeared mutual as North Korea later demanded that Pompeo be left out of negotiations over the country’s nuclear arsenal.
Ultimately, despite concessions, such as an end to annual military exercises in South Korea, North Korea never relinquished its nuclear firepower and later began intensifying its military weapons testing during the Biden administration.
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Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love is slated for release on Jan. 24.
Pompeo has acknowledged that he is actively mulling a bid for the White House in 2024, revealing that he is expecting to make a decision in the spring and that Trump’s entrance into the fray will not deter him from vying.
Other speculated hopefuls, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), have either released books or are slated to before the 2024 cycle heats up. Pence’s book came out last year, and DeSantis’s book is expected to hit bookshelves in late February. So far, Trump is the only major candidate to declare a 2024 candidacy.