When it comes to some of the most notoriously brutal leaders on earth, Vladimir Putin, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Kim Jong Un, President Trump says he’s compelled to trust their word.
It’s really quite remarkable for an American president.
When Otto Warmbier was returned to the United States in 2017 and died shortly afterward, Trump condemned the North Korean regime for the imprisonment and suspected torture of the college student who was arrested in 2015 for alleged spying.
“You are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength inspires us all,” Trump said, addressing Warmbier’s parents, during his 2018 State of the Union address.
“Tonight, we pledge to honor Otto’s memory with American resolve.”
He added in that same speech: “We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and our allies.”
Fast forward to today in Hanoi, when, at a summit Trump said of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un:
“He tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”
That’s what Trump told a reporter on whether he had confronted Jong Un about the treatment of Warmbier, an American student who was imprisoned in North Korea for 15 months, only to return to the US in a comatose state in June 2017 and never recover.
The reporter noted that despite Warmbier’s brutal death, Trump has called Kim “my friend” and repeatedly boasted about their “great relationship.”
The journalist then asked him, “Have you in Singapore during the first Trump-Kim summit or here confronted Kim Jong Un about Otto Warmbier’s death, asked him to take responsibility, and what did he say to you?”
Trump confirmed that he had — but went on to say he takes Kim’s word for it that he had nothing to do with it.
“I really believe something very bad happened to Warmbier, and I don’t think that the top leadership knew about it,” Trump said. “I don’t believe that Kim would’ve allowed that to happen. It just wasn’t in his advantage to allow that to happen.”
Trump continued:
“I did speak to Kim about Warmbier. He felt very badly. He knew the case very well, but he knew it later. And, you know, you got a lot of people — big country, lot of people. And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really, really bad things. But he tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”
Wait. What?
Trump is taking the word of a brutal dictator who had his half-brother murdered with nerve gas at an airport and who continues to live a posh lifestyle while his country suffers the effects of staggering economic sanctions.
Kim rules North Korea with an iron fist.
He wouldn’t know that an American college student had been arrested in his country?
He would miss how Warmbier’s arrest and incarceration became a massive national and international story?
And at no time in the 18 months Warmbier was held would anyone in Kim’s government ever see fit to mention that they were holding an American prisoner?
The shocking comments sparked bipartisan outrage from lawmakers.
Republican Sen. Rob Portman said the “mistreatment of Otto Warmbier is something that is unforgivable.”
“I don’t know how he says he likes the dictator of North Korea so much,” said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Nikki Haley, the president’s former U.N. ambassador tweeted, “Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime.”
“It is totally impossible,” said former Ambassador Bill Richardson. “It is inconceivable that such a high-profile American prisoner like Otto Warmbier, that Kim Jong Un would not know.”
This is hardly the first time that Trump has expressed sympathy for world leaders accused of brutality.
He also refused to condemn Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey, despite CIA intelligence indicating the prince ordered the journalist’s killing.
Trump also repeatedly showers accolades on Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite the Russian government’s long list of abuses.
“It goes to the larger pattern of praise of Trump for the most brutal leaders on Earth,” said Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an Asia adviser under former President George W. Bush.