President Trump jokingly told his former press secretary, Sarah Sanders, to turn on the charm when it came to interacting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
During a 2018 summit in Singapore, Kim and Sanders made eye contact from across the room while he was speaking with Trump, and in the moment, the North Korean leader seemed to winked at her, according to Sanders’s forthcoming book about her time in the White House, which was obtained by the Guardian.
Sanders writes that she looked up “to notice Kim staring at me. We made direct eye contact and Kim nodded and appeared to wink at me. I was stunned. I quickly looked down and continued taking notes. … All I could think was, ‘What just happened? Surely Kim Jong-un did not just mark me!?’”
At a later time, the president, Sanders, and then-White House chief of staff John Kelly were in the presidential “Beast” limousine on the way to the airport, when Trump started to joke about the moment.
“Kim Jong-un hit on you!” Trump said. “He did! He f—ing hit on you!”
“Sir, please stop,” Sanders recalled saying, to which the president, who had Kelly on his side, joked, “Well, Sarah, that settles it. You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team! Your husband and kids will miss you, but you’ll be a hero to your country!”
Sanders said that Trump and Kelly “howled with laughter.”
Her book, Speaking for Myself, will be released next Tuesday.
