Breakup letter
Trump nixes Kim summit, but ‘some day’ Iet’s meet
PRESIDENT TRUMP pulled out of his planned summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, citing the country’s “tremendous anger and open hostility” — and ominously warning that the U.S. military “is ready, if necessary.”
Trump said in a letter to Kim released Thursday by the White House that based on recent statements made by North Korea, he felt it was “inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”
“I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters,” Trump wrote to Kim (inset). “Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you.”
The summit was planned for June 12 in Singapore. It would have been the first meeting between a sitting U.S. President and a North Korean leader.
A defiant statement by a top Foreign Ministry official calling Vice President Pence a “political dummy” and threatening a nuclear confrontation was the final straw for the Trump administration.
“We will neither beg the U.S. for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us,” North Korean state t t media quoted the official as saying. “Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the deci- sion and behavior of the United States.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin jumped into the fray, siding with North Korea. Kim “did everything that he h had promised in adv vance, even blowing u up the tunnels and s shafts” of the count try’s nuclear testing s site, Putin said.
Trump responded i in kind on Thursday.
He said that North K Koreans can talk a about their nuclear cap pabilities, “but ours a are so massive and p powerful that I pray t to G God d th they will never have to be used.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who had pushed for the meeting, appeared to be blindsided by Trump’s announcement and said he was “perplexed” by y the development. “After which, , we heard about cancellation of f the summit by the United States.” The initial reaction from the e North was mild.
Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said North Korea was still l willing to sit down for talks with h the U.S. “at any time, at any for- mat.” Via state media, he said d Trump’s decision was “very re- grettable” and showed “how ur- gently a summit should be real- ized to improve ties.”
Pentagon officials said Ameri- can forces on the peninsula re- main on a normal state of alert. PRESIDENT Trump has posthumously pardoned trailblazing prizefighter Jack Johnson — the country’s first black heavyweight champion.
Johnson — charged with transporting a white woman across state lines for “immoral purposes” under the controversial Mann Act in 1913 — spent a year in jail thanks to a racially motivated conviction by an all-white jury.
“Johnson served ten months in federal prison for what many view as a racially motivated injustice,” Trump said during an Oval Office ceremony. “He was treated very rough, very tough.”
Boxers Deontay Wilder and Lennox Lewis, actor Sylvester Stallone and Johnson’s great-grandniece joined Trump during the announcement.
Joh6nson’s case has been criticized for decades as a miscarriage of justice and a symbol of the syst systemic racism in the j justice system.
Trump des scribed his decis sion as an effort “to c correct a wrong in o our history.”
“He represented s something that was b both very beautiful a and very terrible at t the same time,” he s said.