DONALD TRUMP says Kim Jong-un “tells me everything,” including a “graphic account” of how he gave the go-ahead for his uncle’s execution, journalist Bob Woodward alleges in his new book.
In Woodward’s book, Rage, the author wrote of 18 separate interviews he had with the president between December and July. In one such interview, the president recounted meeting Kim in Singapore in 2018.
Trump told Woodward he grew to admire the North Korean dictator, who told Trump about ordering the execution of his uncle and senior government official Jane Song Thaek in 2013, reportedly for being suspected of disloyalty to the current regime.
In December 2013, the North Korean regime announced they had executed Jang and called him “despicable human scum” for leading a “dissolute and depraved life” after a special military tribunal found him guilty of treason and “attempting to overthrow the state.”
North Korean state media later went on to say Jang was found guilty for “such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state.”
“He began revealing his true colours, thinking that it was just the time for him to realise his wild ambition in the period of historic turn when the generation of the revolution was replaced,” the state-run media said, with reports alleging he was shot by machine-gun fire.
Trump divulged the politics behind his visits with the North Korean dictator.
Trump told Woodward the CIA had “no idea” how to handle the reclusive dictator, adding he dismissed intelligence officials’ assessments saying North Korea would never give up its nuclear weapons.
The president also called his three summits with Kim were no big deal when he decided to talk about lessening its nuclear stockload.
“It takes me two days. I met. I gave up nothing,” Trump told Woodward, offering an analogy of the country’s attachment to nuclear weapons as someone who loves their home and “they just can’t sell it.”
The president also gave Woodward 25 pieces of communication between himself and Kim, which the president described as “love letters.”
In two such letters, Kim addressed Trump as “Your Excellency” and used flowery language to describe their relationship.
“Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand,” Kim wrote in a letter following their first 2018 meeting, “at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honour of that day.”
Kim called Obama an “a–hole” in another letter he wrote to Trump. He then again called Trump “your excellency” when wishing him happy birthday. “I extend my sincere and warm regards to Your Excellency on the occasion of your birthday.”
The two met another two times, in Vietnam and at the DMZ between North and South Korea, before a 2017 North Korean missile test that prompted Trump to call Kim “Littlee Rocket Man” and then tweet he would attack North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Trump told Woodward the United States “would’ve been in a major war” if he was not the president. However, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis said Trump’s tweeting at Kim was “unproductive, childish and dangerous.”
