‘Old’ Trump hits back at ‘short, fat’ Korea Kim
He mocks him online ... then asks to be friends!
DONALD Trump has traded insults with North Korea after he was dubbed ‘old’.
The US President was quick to return the barb, calling the communist state’s leader Kim Jong-un ‘short and fat’.
The war of words is something of a setback for Mr Trump, who has appeared statesmanlike during a tour of Asia.
After a week in which he has appeared disciplined and thoughtful with a series of tightly- scripted speeches, the President couldn’t keep it up after the insult from state media in Pyongyang.
The 71-year-old was referred to by North Korea as the ‘lunatic old man of the White House’.
Returning to the familiar battleground of Twitter, Mr Trump replied: ‘Why would Kim Jongun insult me by calling me “old,” when I would NEVER call him “short and fat”?
‘Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend – and maybe someday that will happen!’ Mr Trump’s combative tweets came after he had boasted about his talents as a mediator on North Korean nuclear disarmament and the conflict in Syria.
He also used Twitter to lambast the ‘haters and fools’ who want to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. And the President mocked ‘crooked’ Hillary Clinton’s failed attempts to improve relations with the Kremlin when she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Mr Trump also let rip to reporters travelling with him on Air Force One.
He dismissed the Russia investigation as a ‘Democratic hit job’ and attacked three former US intelligence agency chiefs who have concluded that Moscow interfered in last year’s election. There was speculation that Mr Trump’s Twitter tirades were caused by the absence of his wife Melania, who has been credited with moderating his fondness for venting on social media.
While her husband headed to the Philippines, she remained in Beijing to visit the Great Wall of China and visit a zoo where she got the chance to stroke a panda. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway defended her boss’s ‘ short and fat’ remark, saying: ‘That was the President just responding the way he does to someone who insulted him first.’
Hours before he arrived in Manila, the last stop on his five-nation tour, police used water cannon to stop hundreds of anti-Trump protesters.
Carrying placards declaring ‘Dump Trump’ and ‘Down with US Imperialism’, the left-wing demonstrators were blocked by police in riot gear. Mr Trump earlier offered to medi- ate in the dispute over control of the South China Sea. He has been joined in Manila at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by leaders from countries including China. But Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said summit delegates shouldn’t discuss the issue. ‘We have to be friends, the other hotheads would like us to confront China and the rest of the world on so many issues,’ he said. ‘The South China Sea is better left untouched, nobody can afford to go to war.’
At a gala dinner Mr Trump toasted hardman leader Mr Duterte, whose brash style has earned him the nickname the ‘Trump of the East’.
‘Lunatic old man’