Key moments in president’s interview, with fact checks
President Donald Trump appeared Friday outside the White House for a wide-ranging interview on “Fox and Friends.”
The interview, which started at 8:30 a.m., morphed into an impromptu question-and-answer session with other reporters.
The following are highlights and fact checks of some of his statements.
On North Korea ‘You would have had 30, 40, 50 million people killed.’
“When I came in, people thought we were probably going to war with North Korea. If we did — quiet, quiet, quiet. If we did, millions of people would have been killed. I don’t mean like — people are saying 100,000. Seoul has 28 million people 30 miles off the border. You would have had 30, 40, 50 million people killed. Who knows what would have happened. I came in, that was what I inherited. I should have never inherited it. That should have been solved long before I got there.” ‘I want my people to do the same’
“Hey, he (Kim Jong Un) is the head of a country, and I mean he is the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks, and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” ‘It’s great to give him credibility’
“I get hit because I went there, I gave him credibility. I think it’s great to give him credibility. Here is what we got, everything. Point after point after point.” ‘I call them war games. I hated them from the day I came in.’
Trump: “They’re doing so much for us. And now we’re well on our way to get denuclearization. And the agreement says there will be total denuclearization. Nobody wants to report that. So the only thing I did was I met. I got along with him great. We have a great chemistry together. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Reporter: “How can Kim love his people if he’s killing them?”
Trump: “I can’t speak to that. I can only speak to the fact that we signed an incredible agreement. It’s great. It’s going to be great for them too because now North Korea can develop and North Korea can become a great country economically. It can become whatever they want. But there won’t be nuclear weapons, and they won’t be aimed at you and your family.”
Reporter: “Why did you offer to halt the military exercises with South Korea?”
Trump: “That was my offer. Just so you understand — do you want to hear it? OK. I call them war games. I hated them from the day I came in. I said, why aren’t we being reimbursed?”
Reporter: “That’s North Korea’s term, war games.” Trump: “That’s my term.”
Reporter: “They use it,
too.”
Trump: “They might use it. We pay for it. We pay millions and millions of dollars for planes and all of this. It’s my term. I said I’d like to halt it because it’s bad to be negotiating and doing it. It costs us a lot of money.”
Fact Check: This requires context. It is unclear how much the joint military exercises with South Korea cost, but Seoul does shoulder some of the financial burden of the presence of U.S. troops. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the top U.S. commander in South Korea, told Congress in February that South Korea paid $830 million in support of U.S. troop activities in 2017 and would increase that contribution by 1 percent this year.
The New York Times was also able to find one instance of Trump using the term “war games” to describe military drills before he met with Kim on Tuesday. When he visited South Korea in November 2017, he praised naval drills in the Pacific as a showing of “great strength.”
On James Comey, the FBI and the inspector general’s report ‘The IG report totally exonerates’
“It is a very unfair situation, but the IG report totally exonerates. I mean, if you look at the results, if you look at the head investigator, is saying we have to stop Trump from becoming president. Well, Trump became president.”
Fact Check: False. The internal report released by the Justice Department’s inspector general Thursday did not “exonerate” Trump. In fact, the 500-page report did not examine or make conclusions about the special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Texts released by the inspector general reveal that a top FBI agent overseeing the investigation into the Trump campaign had said “we’ll stop” Trump from becoming president. But the report concluded that there was no evidence that the political views of the agent factored into the inquiry. ‘What he did was criminal’ Reporter: “From what you’ve seen so far, should James Comey be locked up?”
Trump: “I would never want to get involved in that. Certainly he, they just seemed like criminal acts to me. What he did was criminal. What he did was a terrible thing to the people. What he did was so bad in terms of our Constitution, in terms of the well-being of our country. What he did was horrible. Should he be locked up? Let somebody make a determination.”
‘A den of thieves’
“They all work for Comey. And Comey knew everything that was going on. You think McCabe didn’t tell him everything? McCabe told him everything. McCabe is up for criminal right now. He is now suing; it is a total mess. They’re all going against each other. No, I think Comey was the ringleader of this whole den of thieves, it was a den of thieves.”
On the Russia probe ‘Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign’
“Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. I feel a little badly about it. They went back 12 years to get things that he did 12 years ago. Paul Manafort worked for me for a very short period of time. He worked for Ronald Reagan, he worked for Bob Dole, he worked for John McCain or his firm did, he worked for many other Republicans. He worked for me, what, for 49 days or something?”
Fact Check: False. Paul Manafort was very much a part of the Trump campaign. He joined the campaign March 28, 2016, was promoted to campaign chairman in May 2016 and resigned August 19, 2016. That’s a total of 144 days, not 49 days.
Also contrary to the president’s claims, the charges brought against Manafort by the special counsel also span the time he worked for the Trump campaign. The indictment against Manafort and his protégé, Rick Gates, accuses them of serving as unregistered agents of Ukraine from at least 2006 to 2016 and laundered payments through U.S. and foreign entities “from approximately 2006 through at least 2016.” They also made false and misleading statements to the Justice Department between Nov. 23, 2016, and Feb. 10, 2017.
Manafort on Friday was sent to jail to await trial after prosecutors accused him of witness tampering.