Trump Spends Saturday Morning Tweeting About His Pen Pal, Kim Jong Un
On the morning that wealthy pedophile and sex trafficker
Jeffrey Epstein, a former friend of the president’s, allegedly
hung himself in a New York City jail, Donald Trump was tweeting
attacks against The New York Times and
propping up his North Korean dictator friend, Kim Jong Un.
After his tweet storm, the White House said at 9:30 a.m.
that it would not be announcing any additional news for the day.
On North Korea, Trump wrote that Kim had sent him another
letter in which “he stated, very nicely, that he would like to meet and
start negotiations as soon as the joint U.S./South Korea joint exercise are
over.”
Trump appeared to agree with Kim that the joint military
exercises scheduled for Sunday between the U.S. and its ally South Korea are “ridiculous
and expensive.” The U.S. president also provided cover for North Korea’s
continued testing of short-range ballistic missiles.
Early Saturday, North Korea fired two
missiles that landed in the Sea of Japan, east of the Korean Peninsula, the
BBC reported. It was the fifth missile launch by North Korea in recent weeks,
and likely a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the news
organization said.
Trump said his letter from Kim offered “a small apology for
testing the short range missiles, and that this testing would stop when
the exercises end.”
The president added that he would “look forward” to another
meeting with Kim “in the not too distant future.”
It’s not the first time Trump and Kim have exchanged
pleasantries in the form of a letter. In June of last year, Trump received a
gigantic missive from Kim delivered to the White House by North Korea’s former
intelligence chief Kim Yong Chol, who now serves as that country’s top
nuclear negotiator.
A new meeting between Trump and Kim would be the third
such summit this year between the two leaders to discuss denuclearization. During the
most recent encounter last June, Trump became the first
sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea. It was a “made-for
television moment,” the Associated Press reported at the time.
Trump said it was a “great
honor” to step into North Korea.
Despite all the praise and showmanship, the continuous talks
have amounted to little in terms of results. North Korea continues firing
missiles, and after the most recent summit, North Korea’s mission to the United
Nations said last month that the U.S. is “practically more and more hell-bent
on the hostile acts against the DPRK.”
The comment was a response
to a letter sent by Western allies including the United States urging the
U.N. to comply with sanctions on North Korea.
A summit between the two leaders earlier
this year in Vietnam ended abruptly without a deal, as Trump seemingly
was distracted by the congressional testimony back home by his former
fixer, Michael Cohen.
Trump also met with Kim in June 2018 in Singapore.