A statement released by Warmbier’s parents may have been the catalyst for the presidential flip-flop. President Donald Trump is attempting to walk back…
A statement released by Warmbier’s parents may have been the catalyst for the presidential flip-flop.
President Donald Trump is attempting to walk back his comments defending North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over the death of captured American student Otto Warmbier, according to The Hill. The president had previously said he believed the North Korean dictator when he claimed he had no knowledge of Warmbier’s condition.
“He tells me he didn’t know about it, and I take him at his word,” the president said at a press conference following an aborted nuclear weapons summit with Kim in Vietnam.
Those remarks led to a massive outcry, to the point where not only political leaders from both sides of the aisle took issue with it, Warmbier’s family also took the extraordinary step of releasing a statement calling out the North Korean dictator, and indirectly, the president.
Trump then claimed in a pair of tweets that he had been “misinterpreted” in his earlier comments, and simultaneously took credit for getting Warmbier released.
