Trump Appears to Conflate Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un

In an interview aired on Fox & Friends, President Trump on Tuesday morning appeared to confuse Kim Jong Un, the young leader of North Korea since 2012, and his late father, Kim Jong Il, the dictator who ruled over the Hermit Kingdom from 1994 to 2011. A reporter asked if Trump had ruled out a military strike on North Korea, and he responded, “I hope there’s going to be peace, but they’ve been talking with this gentleman for a long time. You read [Bill] Clinton’s book and he said, ‘Oh, we made such a great peace deal’ and it was a joke.” He added, “You look at different things over the years with President Obama. Everybody has been out-played. They’ve all been out-played by this gentleman, and we’ll see what happens.” Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo that the U.S. stands “100 percent” behind its ally in trying to mitigate any risks from the North Korean nuclear program. Pyongyang officials warned Monday that it would continue its provocative missile tests on a “weekly, monthly, and yearly basis” and promised “all-out war” if U.S. military forces took action against it.