President Trump says he isn’t bothered by North Korea’s recent weapons testing, unlike some of his own “people,” because Kim Jong Un has already shown his loyalty by making a crack at Joe Biden.
“North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me,” Trump tweeted Sunday while visiting Japan. “I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Bidan [sic] a low IQ individual, & worse,” the president wrote. “Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?”
The president later tweeted out the exact same comments again but corrected the spelling of Biden's surname.
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Bizarrely, Trump made the comments not only just hours after his own national security adviser condemned North Korea for testing ballistic missiles, but also right before his scheduled meeting in Japan with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who also spoke out about the missile testing.
The country's test of ballistic missiles earlier this month was seen as an aggressive escalation that violates United Nations Security Council resolutions, according to Trump's national security adviser John Bolton.
“In terms of violating Security Council resolutions, there’s no doubt about that,” Bolton told reporters on Saturday morning. Bolton also said Trump is working to maintain sanctions pressure on the North Korean regime until it backs down.
A day earlier, Pyongyang suggested it had no intention of cooperating with Washington until the Trump administration agrees to make compromises instead of insisting on what it described as unilateral disarmament. An unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman made the comments to state media, saying nuclear negotiations between the two countries will not resume until the U.S. changes its terms.
The president's tweet, on the other hand, suggests he is placing his bets on Kim being loyal to his earlier denuclearization pledge because of the North Korean leader's diss of the former vice president. The country’s official Korean Central News Agency echoed Trump in an editorial earlier this week that labeled 2020 contender Biden a “fool of low IQ” and an “imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being.”
Trump, who now says he took that as a “signal” that Kim would keep his promises, apparently forgot his own history as the subject of mockery by the North Korean regime.
Several months after he took office in 2017, the North Korean Foreign Ministry dismissed Trump as an “old lunatic.”
Trump’s tweet has baffled many in Washington, including members of Joe Biden’s team. Brandon English, a senior digital adviser for the presidential candidate, retweeted Trump and wrote, “... I honestly have no idea what to do with this.”
