White House denies Trump, Abe were briefed in public on North Korea

On Saturday night, a dinner attendee at the Mar-a-Lago resort event posted photos on Facebook and said they showed Trump, White House staff, and Japanese leader Shinzo Abe learning about the missile launch and planning how to respond. The group was engulfed in looking over computers, planning for what — Spicer said the onlooker wrongly assumed — was in reference to North Korea.

In a statement released Monday evening, Spicer said Trump was “briefed in a classified room prior to the dinner.” The photo instead showed “all the US and Japanese staff – no one in the photo was not part of the delegations – and they were reviewing logistics for the press conference” that was held later in the evening, he said. Trump, Spicer said, was later briefed again about the North Korean incident.

Richard DeAgazio, a member of the club, had shared the pictures with his Facebook followers and called the events a “flurry of activity at dinner” as a result of “the news that North Korea had launched a missile in the direction of Japan.”

“Wow…..the center of the action!!!” DeAgazio wrote.