Trump says he expects to meet Kim Jong Un this year, citing North Korea’s 57 nuclear weapons

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this year, and said the Asian nation held 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons. The remarks came after Trump ordered Pentagon officials to cut short joint military exercises with South Korea, saying they sent a message to […]

In an impromptu White House meeting with reporters, the president touted his relationship with Kim and said North Korea has “57 very powerful nuclear weapons.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he planned to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and said the Asian nation held 57 "very powerful" nuclear weapons. The remarks come as Trump ordered Pentagon officials to cut short joint exercises with the South Korean military, writing in a Sunday social media post that they sent a message to Pyongyang that was "totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful." During Trump's first term, Kim called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” and threatened that he had use of a "nuclear button" on his desk. The leaders' relationship cooled after face-to-face meetings in 2018 and 2019, including a brief exchange at the demilitarized zone between the Koreas in which Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to step into North Korean territory. "I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he's going to be fine as long as we have a smart president," Trump told reporters Wednesday during a tour of the helipad he is constructing on the Wh