Speaker Nancy Pelosi said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was the “big winner” in the Vietnam summit with President Trump that tried but failed to reach a denuclearization deal.
“I guess it took two meetings to realize Kim Jong Un is not on the level,” said Pelosi, D-Calif., referring to the two sit-downs between the leaders. “He was a big winner, Kim Jong Un, in getting to sit face to face with the most powerful person in the world, the president of the United States.”
She also criticized Trump’s comment that he believed Kim did not know about the circumstances leading up to American Otto Warmbier ending up in a coma in a North Korean prison, calling the comment “strange.”
Pelosi said “something is wrong” with Trump for trusting Kim’s claim about Warmbier, who died days after arriving in the United States of grievous injuries inflicted while imprisoned in North Korea.
“It’s strange, and I don’t know, something is wrong that Kim Jong Un, a proven thug, that the president chooses to believe,” Pelosi said.
[Opinion: The ‘America first’ president just gave Kim Jong Un cover for the murder of American student]
But Pelosi praised Trump for refusing to settle for Kim’s demand that the U.S. drop sanctions against North Korea in exchange for eliminating just one nuclear weapons site.
“It’s really good the president didn’t give him anything for the little he was proposing,” Pelosi said.
Trump left Vietnam abruptly on Thursday after failing to reach a denuclearization deal with Kim.
