Susan Walsh/AP
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo aren’t on the same page on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, just days away from a major summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Vietnam. In a Sunday morning interview on CNN, Pompeo was asked if he believed if the dictatorship still posed a “nuclear threat.”
Pompeo said that it did. When pressed by host Jake Tapper about Trump’s past assertion to the contrary, Pompeo told Tapper that Trump had never said such a thing. “I know precisely what he said,” Pompeo responded.
But Trump did say that. After the much-hyped 2018 summit between the two heads of state in Singapore, Trump announced that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea” [sic]:
Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018
There’s a significant difference posing a nuclear threat and no longer posing a nuclear threat, inasmuch as there’s a real difference between “the annihilation of the planet” and “Wednesday.” The president and his secretary of state have three more days to get their position straight before the big meeting.
