President Donald Trump seemingly justified the brutal actions of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and said he thinks the two leaders “understand each other.”
“I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done,” Trump said in an interview that aired Wednesday on Fox News when he was asked about the “bad things” Kim had done.
“So have a lot of other people,” Trump said.
The comments about Kim’s actions somewhat echoed rhetoric Trump had used previously to defend Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In February 2017, Trump was asked by then Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly about Putin being “a killer.”
“But he’s a killer,” O’Reilly said to Trump.
“There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump responded.
Trump also said in Wednesday’s interview that Kim was “very smart” and a “great negotiator.”
“Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you can do that at 27 years old. I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that. So he’s a very smart guy, he’s a great negotiator. But I think we understand each other,” Trump said.
Trump’s remarks followed a historic summit in Singapore between the President and his North Korean counterpart.
On Wednesday, Trump declared through a series of tweets that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat. The statement came despite the lack of concrete proof that North Korea will discontinue its nuclear program.
“Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump tweeted as he arrived back in Washington. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”
CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi and Stephen Collinson contributed to this report.
