Journalist Bob Woodward’s new book about the president includes excerpts from rosy letters sent from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to President Trump.
For his book, Rage, which is set to be released on Sept. 15, Woodward conducted 18 interviews with Trump over the course of several months. Excerpts from Trump and Kim’s missives that portray Kim as fostering a fawning pen-pal relationship with the president are included in the book, which Trump has already dismissed as “fake.”
In the letters, the North Korean dictator refers to Trump as “Your Excellency” and said his meetings with the president were a “precious memory” that highlights how the “deep and special friendship between us will work as a magical force,” according to the Washington Post.
In one of the letters, Kim wrote to Trump that he wanted “another historic meeting between myself and Your Excellency reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy film.”
[Read more: ‘Thug, Mr. President. Thug’: Pelosi slams Trump over Kim Jong Un flattery]
“I feel pleased to have formed good ties with such a powerful and preeminent statesman as Your Excellency,” Kim said in another letter. And in yet another letter, Kim reminisced about “that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day.”
Trump told Woodward that his letters to Kim were “top secret” and could not be released.
The president also told Woodward that the U.S. has developed a secret “weapons system” that countries like Russia and China are not aware of, although he doesn’t elaborate. The anecdote came as Trump discussed how the U.S. was close to war with the hermit nation back in 2017.
“I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody — what we have is incredible,” Trump said, according to Woodward, in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
During his interviews with Woodward, Trump defended his communications with Kim and their three face-to-face meetings. He told the award-winning journalist that the CIA has “no idea” how to handle North Korea.
“I met. Big f—ing deal,” Trump told Woodward. “It takes me two days. I met. I gave up nothing.”
Trump reportedly bragged to Woodward about how Kim “tells me everything,” including a description of how he had his own uncle killed. The president recounted to Woodward that when he met Kim during a 2018 meeting in Singapore, he thought, “Holy shit,” and found the dictator “far beyond smart.”
Trump’s three talks with the North Korean leader were intended to lead to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and better relations with South Korea, although the country has not abandoned its nuclear program and has insisted that it must remain in place as a deterrent to the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. Trump’s February 2019 meeting with Kim was cut short after the parties couldn’t reach a substantive agreement on denuclearization. Since that time, North Korea has performed a number of missile tests.
Even as the world began grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, North Korea was still test firing short-range missiles off its coast. NBC News reported this week that the country may be preparing a submarine-launched ballistic missile test.
“A sea-launched missile test would definitely cross all of President Trump’s red lines because it would involve a major ballistic missile,” said Dr. Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It would be difficult for President Trump to ignore this.”
Woodward’s book also contends that Trump wanted to downplay the coronavirus threat and privately acknowledged how deadly it was early in the pandemic.
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, just after he declared a national emergency. “I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
