At his first Cabinet meeting of 2019, President Trump opined on a myriad of issues ranging from border wall funding to his recently departed Defense Secretary James Mattis. Trump suggested he fired Mattis, even though Mattis publicly announced he was resigning after disagreeing with Trump’s foreign policies. Speaking on North Korea, Trump said he received a “great letter” from Kim Jong-un and looked forward to a follow-up meeting following their historic June summit in Singapore.
President Donald Trump: “We’ve established a very good relationship with North Korea. That was going to be a war. That could have been a World War III, to be honest with you, because that would have—a lot of people would have had to get involved in that all over Asia, then it spreads beyond Asia. And instead, we have somebody that I really think wants to get on to economic development and making a lot of success and money, frankly, for his country.”
Trump asserted that if he were not president, a war would have broken out on the Asian continent. He also expressed confidence that North Korea was not testing nuclear weapons. It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will agree to lift sanctions, as demanded by North Korea, before moving forward with negotiations.