Mark Wilson/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Friday declined to say whether he has personally spoken with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but set high expectations for an eventual meeting saying, “something very dramatic could happen.”
“I don’t want to comment on that,” Trump said when asked if he’d personally spoken with Kim during a news conference alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “We have a very good working relationship. We’re setting up a meeting. Things have changed very radically from a few months ago.”
Trump noted how that is an improvement from his previous back-and-forths with Kim in 2017, in which the president labeled the North Korean dictator “Rocket Man,” and Kim called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.” He also said he is amused when experts in the Washington foreign policy establishment try to lecture him on how to handle North Korea.
“I’ll be watching people that fail so badly over the last 25 years explaining to me how to make a deal with North Korea,” Trump said. “I get a big, big kick out of that.”
Earlier Friday, Trump said that he has narrowed down the potential meeting spot for his summit with Kim to two or three locations, and still expects to be face-to-face with him within a matter of weeks.
Merkel praised the president during the news conference for his administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” which she credited with bringing Kim to agree to sit down with the U.S. as well as his historic meeting Thursday with South Korea’s President Moon.
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