“I’d like to see it done in one meeting but oftentimes that’s not the way deals work.”
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he may meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un more than once in order to reach a deal on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, according to Reuters.
“I’d like to see it done in one meeting but oftentimes that’s not the way deals work,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
“There’s a very good chance that it won’t be done in one meeting or two meetings or three meetings. But it’ll get done at some point,” he continued. “It may get done really nicely and really intelligently, or it may not get done intelligently. It may have to be the hard way.”
Trump also said that he is set to host Kim Yong Choi, North Korea’s former military intelligence chief and a top Kim associate, on Friday and that he will be receiving a letter from Kim Jong Un regarding their negotiations.
The news that Trump may meet with Kim multiple times comes just after the president announced last week that he would no longer be meeting with Kim at all after he was faced with what he called “tremendous anger and open hostility,” likely referencing a statement North Korea made threatening a nuclear war against the United States.
He later walked back the cancellation.
“We’ll see what happens. It could even be the 12th. We’re talking to them now. They very much want to do it, we’d like to do it,” the president said.
Earlier in the day on Thursday, Trump tweeted that he was having “very good” meetings with North Korean leaders.
“The meetings have been very positive,” Trump told reporters. “It’s all a process. We’ll see.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim Yong Choi in New York City on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss rescheduling the meeting between the two nations.
Kelcey Caulder is a News Fellow at IJR. Previously, she worked with the web team at the Los Angeles Times and led the Student Press Law Center’s campa… more
