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President Donald Trump fired back at those criticizing his approach to negotiating with North Korea on Friday, saying he’s defending the country’s human rights offenses to prevent a nuclear war that could have killed millions of people.
“You’ve spoken so passionately about the circumstances that led to Otto Warmbier’s death. In the same breath, you’re defending now Kim Jong Un’s human rights record — how can you do that?” Trump was asked during a heated impromptu interview with reporters at the White House on Friday.
The president responded: “You know why? Because I don’t want to see a nuclear weapon destroy you and your family.”
“I want to have a good relationship with North Korea,” Trump added. “When I came in people thought we were probably going to war with North Korea.”
Trump then added that if he had gone to war with the rogue nation “millions of people would have been killed.”
“You would have had 30 million, 40 million, 50 million people killed. Who knows what would have happened,” he said. “I came in; that is what I was inherited. I should have never inherited — that should have been solved long before I got there. I did a great job this weekend.”
He also defended himself against critics who claim the United States gave up too much during the recent summit with North Korea.
“You know what I gave up? I met. I met. We had great chemistry. He gave us a lot. You haven’t had a missile test in seven months. You haven’t had a firing. You haven’t had a nuclear test in 8 1/2 months. You haven’t had missiles flying over Japan,” Trump said.
However, Democrats have argued that the deal made in Singapore was far more beneficial to Kim Jong Un than the United States.
“It shows what a weak negotiator the president is and how unlikely we are to ultimately get an agreement that’s good for us,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told IJR “They made no concessions, we made an enormous concession — so much for the art of the deal.”
William is a Senior Congressional and Breaking News Reporter for IJR. Prior to that, he covered politics and breaking news at AOL.com, leading the sit… more
