EMOTIONAL STATEMENT
Otto Warmbier’s family rebukes Trump’s defense of Kim Jong Un.
President Donald Trump sparred publicly Friday with the parents of Otto Warmbier after they rebuked him for holding North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un blameless in their son’s death following 17 months in captivity, as growing tensions between them burst into an open feud.
Hours after Fred and Cindy Warmbier issued an emotional statement that directly accused Mr. Kim and his “evil regime” of killing their son in 2017, Mr. Trump asserted in a pair of tweets that his views had been “misinterpreted” when he defended Mr. Kim at a news conference a day earlier in Hanoi.
Mr. Trump had said, in response to a question from a Washington Post reporter, that Mr. Kim felt “very badly” about Mr. Warmbier’s death and that he took the authoritarian leader “at his word” that he was unaware of the college student’s abusive treatment.
“Of course I hold North Korea responsible for Otto’s mistreatment and death,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, without mentioning Mr. Kim. The president blamed the Obama administration for not doing more to secure Mr. Warmbier’s release and emphasized that Mr. Warmbier “will not have died in vain” as he continues to negotiate with Pyongyang.
“Otto and his family have become a tremendous symbol of strong passion and strength, which will last for many years into the future,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I love Otto and think of him often.”
Mr. Trump’s effort at political damage control came hours after the Warmbiers said they felt compelled to speak out after maintaining a relatively low profile out of respect for the president’s sensitive negotiations with Mr. Kim, including summits in Singapore last June and in Hanoi this week.
The president had sought to forge a bond with the family as part of an international pressure campaign on the Kim regime in 2017 and early 2018 that helped lead to the summits, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Mr. Trump called the family several times during that period, and Vice President Mike Pence also maintained contact with the Warmbiers. The parents were among the guests of first lady Melania Trump at the 2018 State of the Union address, during which Mr. Trump cited Mr. Warmbiers’ death to highlight the cruelty of the Kim regime.
But the Warmbiers have been growing increasingly exacerbated with Mr. Trump’s embrace of Mr. Kim since their first meeting in Singapore, according to a person with close ties to the family. Mr. Trump boasted at a campaign rally last fall that he and Mr. Kim “fell in love” after exchanging personal letters. And this week, Mr. Trump referred to Mr. Kim as “my friend” in a tweet and praised him as a “real leader” in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
In December, the Warmbier family won a $500 million federal court judgment against North Korea for the torture and extrajudicial killing of their son.
“Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto,” the Warmbiers said in their statement Friday. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuse or lavish praise can change that.”
The sharp public break between the family and Mr. Trump now leaves the White House struggling to deal with growing political backlash over the president’s lack of attention on North Korea’s human rights abuses at a time when nuclear disarmament negotiations have broken down. The collapse of the talks during the Hanoi summit, which ended early as the two sides failed to reach a deal, has cast doubt on Mr. Trump’s gamble that his personal rapport with Mr. Kim would be enough to bridge large gaps between the two sides.