President Donald Trump confirmed to reporters that he plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year, a highly unusual move for an American president, if not for Trump himself.
Asked whether he was expecting to meet with Kim this year, Trump responded, “Yeah, I will be.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the president was pushing for a meeting with the North Korean leader, whom Trump previously met with three times, in 2018 and 2019.
The U.S. does not have formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, and no other sitting presidents have met with the country’s supreme leaders. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea to meet with the country’s then-leaders, but those trips took place after they left office.
Just days ago, Trump ordered the U.S. military to downsize joint exercises with South Korea, citing in part his “very good relationship” with Kim.
“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” Trump said in a social media post.
The president also suggested that South Korea’s refusal to assist the United States in its war with Iran factored into his decision to reduce joint military drills.
Trump, who has previously exchanged letters with Kim, declined to tell reporters whether the two leaders were writing letters to each other again. Asked whether he was exchanging letters, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that,” adding that he got along with the leader.
“And you know what?” Trump continued. “The fact that I get along with him, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons.”
It’s unclear how Trump arrived at the specific number of weapons.
NBC News has reached out to the White House for further details about the president’s plans to meet with Kim.
In 2019, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to step inside North Korea at the Demilitarized Zone. Earlier that year, he also met with Kim in Vietnam for a nuclear summit that did not lead to an agreement.
They also met in 2018 in Singapore.
North Korea’s official news agency said that Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, was not aware of any recent communication between her brother and Trump.
Trump’s announcements this week mark another instance of his administration shying away from longtime allies, departing from the internationalist foreign policy approaches of past Republican administrations.
Trump previously criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over his efforts to secure more U.S. military aid and has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom the U.S. gave a red-carpet greeting at a summit in Alaska last August. Trump has also questioned NATO’s commitment to the U.S. and alarmed European allies by pushing for the U.S. to control Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark.
