President Trump said the U.S. and North Korea would be at war with each other if he hadn’t been elected president, a war that could have left “millions” dead.
“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” Trump said in his State of the Union address. His prepared remarks added that he thought “potentially millions of people” would have been killed if that war had broken out, but Trump didn’t say those words as he spoke.
[Watch: Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address]
But Trump said he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will hold their second summit meeting on the last two days of February.
“Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one,” he said. “Chairman Kim and I will meet again on February 27 and 28 in Vietnam.”
Last June, Trump and Kim held their first bilateral summit in Singapore, where the two leaders agreed to continue negotiations in the future, and Pyongyang pledged to take steps towards “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
After the two signed a joint statement on their meeting, Kim said that they “decided to leave the past behind” and claimed “the world will see a major change” in the coming months.
In January, Trump met with one of Kim’s top advisers, Kim Yong Chol, to discuss both progress in denuclearization as well as planning and ironing out the details of a second summit with the North Korean leader.
Trump has continuously touted the progress that has been made in regard to national security and relations with the authoritarian regime, claiming that he is very tough on other countries.
Last month, he told reporters that “there’s no rockets,” referencing the lack of missile tests out of North Korea since his first bilateral meeting with Kim.
