President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday he is “open” to meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during his Asia tour. The two men haven’t met face-to-face since June 2019, when Trump became the first sitting president to step into the communist country.
“I’d be open to it, 100%. I got along very well with him, Kim Jong Un,” Trump said on Air Force One as he headed to Malaysia. The president went on to ask the media to “put out the word.”
Trump closes his Asia tour in South Korea, where he will be near the Korean Demilitarized Zone, where he and Kim last met. He will fly to South Korea on Wednesday to meet with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. Trump asked the media for help in contacting the dictator, adding that the North Koreans “have a lot of nuclear weapons, but not a lot of telephone service.”
The meeting request was not the only noteworthy comment he made in reference to North Korea. The president recognized the communist state as a nuclear power, signifying a shift after the United States had long aimed to weaken its arsenal. North Korea has been an adversary of the United States for decades, resulting in many nuclear threats, and eventually leading to Pyongyang deploying troops to assist Russia in the war with Ukraine.
“I think they are sort of a nuclear power,” Trump said. “I mean, I know how many weapons they have. I know everything about them and I have a very good relationship with Kim Jung Un. When you say they have to be recognized as a nuclear power, well, they’ve got a lot of nuclear weapons, I’ll say that.”
Trump held three summits with the dictator during his first presidential term, but does not have any scheduled for his second term as of Saturday morning. In 2018, the two met at the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore, and another summit took place in 2019. The third visit happened later in 2019, when they met at the DMZ.
LAWMAKERS SQUIRM AS FOOD STAMPS BECOME NEXT SHUTDOWN FUNDING CLIFF
The Trump administration has not sent Kim an invitation, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment.