Years before he became president, Donald J. Trump discussed what he would do as commander in chief to address the threat of North Korea.
“First I would negotiate. I would negotiate like crazy. And I’d make sure that we tried to get the best deal possible,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in a 1999 interview with the late Tim Russert, which made the rounds on social media on Tuesday.
In a 1999 interview on @MeetThePress, Donald Trump described how he would handle North Korea if he was elected president. pic.twitter.com/chARew2ddY— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 9, 2017
Following two intercontinental ballistic missile launches in recent weeks and a report about a U.S. intelligence assessment that found that North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its interconinental ballistic missiles, Trump, now president, threatened on Tuesday “fire and fury” against the hermit nation if it doesn’t stop its nuclear weapons program. This came only days after he celebrated the United Nations Security Council’s passage of new sanctions in response to North Korean aggression.
Back in 1999, when current leader Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong-il, was still supreme leader, Trump called North Korea “sort of wacko” and “not a bunch of dummies.”
He said the country was developing nuclear weapons “for a reason” and again stressed his preference to negotiate peace.
“Wouldn’t it be good to sit down and really negotiate something?” he said. If diplomacy failed, he said “you better solve the problem now” before North Korean actually has nuclear-armed missiles pointed at cities like New York City and Washington, D.C.
“You better do it now,” he said.
Upon examination of North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile launches on July 4 and 28, intelligence agencies and experts are concerned that the hermit nation will be capable of launching a missile armed with a nuclear weapon that could reach parts of the U.S. within the next year.
