Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Leaders discuss North Korea as Trump seeks to reassure key ally Abe.
He touts Pompeo’s ‘great’ visit with North Korea leader
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently met secretly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as the White House sought to use the negotiations toward a Trump-Kim summit to boost Pompeo’s standing as he faces a close vote in the Senate next week to become secretary of state.
Pompeo “just left North Korea, had a great meeting with Kim Jong Un and got along with him really well, really great,” Trump told reporters amid his two-day summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Palm Beach, Fla. “He is that kind of a guy — he is very smart but he gets along with people.”
Trump earlier on Wednesday tweeted that the meeting in North Korea was a prelude to a summit between himself and Kim by early June, confirming published reports and providing the clearest sign that serious planning is underway. A White House official confirmed separately that Pompeo and Kim met over Easter weekend, though Trump mistakenly said in his tweet that it occurred last week.
It was the highest-level meeting between a U.S. official and a North Korean leader since 2000, when President Bill Clinton’s secretary of tate, Madeleine Albright, met with Kim’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il.
In 2014, President Barack Obama’s CIA director, James Clapper, traveled to North Korea to win the release of two prisoners held by the regime, but he did not meet with Kim.
The developments underscore the dramatic turn in Trump’s approach toward North Korea, which has unnerved Japan. The president had derided Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and warned the previous secretary of state whom he fired, Rex Tillerson, against negotiating with North Korea. Since he abruptly decided last month to pursue talks himself, however, his rhetoric has become more hopeful and conciliatory.
Trump did not appear to win any concessions from Kim in exchange for the high-level visit from Pompeo. To a question at a press conference with Abe at the close of their summit Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that the regime is still holding three Americans captive after the release of the dying Otto Warmbier last year, but he didn’t answer whether he would go forward with a meeting with Kim if they remained in detention.
Trump did say that he would not meet with Kim “if we don’t think it’s going to be successful.”
“If the meeting, when I’m there, is not fruitful I will respectfully leave,” Trump said, and continue the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy of sanctions against the regime.
The discussion of North Korea came at Mar-a-Lago with Japan’s Abe that was intended to reassure a key ally, though it was hardly clear that was the outcome.
Japan had been blindsided by Trump’s announcement that he would meet with Kim, and it fears a deal in which Americans agree to reduce their military presence in the region, which has been Japan’s shield since World War II. The country is also frustrated that, unlike other major U.S. allies, it has not been exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump recently proposed.
Trump indicated that he had given Japan no relief from the tariffs. Instead, he emphasized the size of the U.S. trade deficit with Japan, saying “if we can come to an agreement” to alleviate that, “I would look forward to taking them off.”
And he may have further embarrassed Abe, who already is in political trouble at home, on another trade issue: With a late-night tweet on Tuesday and again at the press conference, Trump all but dashed hopes that he would have the United States reenter a Pacific trade pact as Abe has urged.
Trump had said only a week ago that he would reconsider his decision, made just after taking office, to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It was unclear whether Trump had offered Abe any other trade concessions during their meetings, which were dominated, at least in public, by the North Korea discussion.
In dispatching Pompeo to North Korea, Trump avoided officially sending a diplomat to a country with which the United States has no diplomatic relations. Still, the assignment was unusual given that Pompeo, while still =CIA director, is awaiting Senate confirmation as secretary of state.
Pompeo faces a close vote for Senate confirmation, and he will likely need votes from Democrats. A divided Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to decline to recommend his confirmation. Several Democrats have come out against the nomination.
Republicans hold 51 votes in the Senate, but Sen. John McCain of Arizona has been undergoing cancer treatment, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has announced he will oppose Pompeo’s nomination, citing Pompeo’s support for the war in Iraq.
Trump is working to persuade Paul to change his mind. He called Paul and on Wednesday spoke about him publicly during lunch with Abe.
“I will say this about Rand Paul: He’s never let me down,” Trump said.