Trump touts Guam as tourist destination
HAGÅTÑA, Guam — If there’s one thing Guam does not have to worry about while the tiny island is in the nuclear cross hairs of North Korea, it’s tourism, President Donald Trump told the island’s governor in a phone call made public Saturday.
The threat by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to create “an enveloping fire” around the tiny U.S. territory in the Western Pacific will boost Guam tourism “tenfold,” Trump said in the recorded conversation with Gov. Eddie Calvo.
The recording was put on the Republican governor’s Facebook page and other social media accounts.
Trump said: “I have to tell you, you have become extremely famous all over the world. They are talking about Guam; and they’re talking about you.” And when it comes to tourism, he added, “I can say this: You’re going to go up, like, tenfold with the expenditure of no money.”
Calvo agreed: “It’s a paradise. We got 95 percent occupancy and after all this stuff calms down, we’re going to have 110 percent occupancy.”
Efforts to reach the White House on Saturday for comment were not immediately successful.
Guam’s $5 billion economy is fueled mainly by tourism and the U.S. military, which occupies about 30 percent of the island and is looking to expand. The island, roughly the size of Chicago and home to about 160,000 people, is about 2,200 miles southeast of North Korea.
Calvo told Trump he had “never felt more safe or so confident than with you at the helm. So, with all the criticism going on over there from a guy who is being targeted, we need a president like you.”