President Trump took heat from both sides of the aisle on Thursday for saying he trusts that Kim Jong Un was not responsible for the death…
President Trump took heat from both sides of the aisle on Thursday for saying he trusts that Kim Jong Un was not responsible for the death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died after being imprisoned in North Korea.
At a press conference in Vietnam, Trump told reporters that Kim had denied involvement in Warmbier’s death, “and I will take him at his word.”
“He knew the case very well. But he knew it later,” Trump said of Kim. “And, you know, you’ve got a lot of people. Big country. Lot of people. And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really bad things.”
The remarks from Trump were somewhat surprising since he had previously said that Warmbier was “tortured beyond belief” while in prison in North Korea. Trump also took credit for Warmbier’s release in 2017.
But Trump has also sought to develop a closer relationship with Kim as he seeks a nuclear deal with North Korea.
Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly attempting to steal a propaganda poster during a January 2016 visit to Pyongyang.
