Kim Won't Be 'Happy' to See Trump Again
North Korea seems convinced that talking to the U.S. is a dead end, and Trump isn’t the one to change their mind.
The president repeated his claim that Kim Jong-un will be glad to have him back in office:
“He liked me,” Trump told reporters on Monday, referring to Kim. “I liked him. We got along very well … He is a nuclear power. We got along. I think he will be happy to see me coming back.”
Everything that we know about the North Korean government’s view of Trump tells us that this is wrong. Kim was humiliated when Trump insisted on maximalist demands at Hanoi and the negotiations collapsed, and in the five years since then he has rebuffed all attempts to resume talks. When Trump mentioned North Korea during his convention speech last summer, Pyongyang was quick to dismiss the idea that their government was pleased by Trump’s political return. Following the election, Kim said that North Korea’s negotiations with the U.S. under Trump only confirmed Washington’s “unchangeable” hostility to his country. North Korea seems convinced that talking to the U.S. is a dead end, and Trump isn’t the one to change their mind.
Trump seems to imagine that nothing has changed since 2019 and that he and Kim can go back to exchanging their “love letters,” but he couldn’t be more wrong about that.