President Trump is willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for direct negotiations over the North Korean nuclear weapons program, contradicting his chief of staff.
Trump told Bloomberg in an interview Monday that he would meet with Kim face to face in “the right circumstances.”
“If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump said. “If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.”
Just hours earlier, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said exactly the opposite when asked by CBS if Trump would be willing to meet with the young North Korean dictator.
“Not right now, I can’t,” Priebus said. “Probably not … I don’t see that happening. We’re going to need a lot of cooperation among the region and our leaders around the world in order to get this person under control.”
Trump has been coy about whether he would take military action to stop North Korea from testing another nuclear bomb. The reclusive authoritarian state has been called the world’s biggest security problem in recent weeks.
The regime tested an intercontinental ballistic missile over the weekend; the launch failed and the missile fell into the sea.
Trump has warned Kim not to test another nuclear bomb and is pressuring the Chinese government to twist the screws on North Korea’s economy in order to get Kim to dismantle his nuclear weapons program.
