President Trump held a news conference in Singapore on Tuesday after his meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Below are excerpts from his remarks.
Will Kim Jong-un return remains and destroy a nuclear site?
I think he’ll do it. I really believe that, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this. I really believe, and — it was really the engine-testing site, in addition to all of the other things that they’ve agreed to do. It was the — they have a very powerful engine-testing site, that again we’re able to see because of the heat that it emits. And, yeah, I’m able to — I’m very happy, I’ll tell you what, I’m very happy with those two points, the two points you mentioned, but I think you might be referring to the thing that’s not in, which is the engine-testing site.
Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong, I mean I may stand before you in six months and say, hey, I was wrong — I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.
The video of the North’s future, with beaches and condos
I told him, “You may not want this. You may want to do a much smaller version of this. I mean, you’re going to do something, but you may want to do a smaller version. You may not want that, with trains, super everything at the top. And maybe you won’t want that.”
It’s going to be up to them. It’s going to be up to the people, what they want. And they may not want that, and I understand that too. It’s a version of what could happen, what could take place As an example. they have great beaches. You see that whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean, right? I said “Boy, look at that view. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?” And I explained, I said, instead of doing that you could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective. You have South Korea, you have China and they own the land in the middle. How bad is that, right? It’s great.
Honoring an American who died after being detained in North Korea
Otto Warmbier is a very special person, and he will be for a long time in my life. His parents are good friends of mine. I think without Otto, this would not have happened. Something happened from that day — it was a terrible thing, it was brutal, but a lot of people started to focus on what was going on, including North Korea. I really think that Otto is someone who did not die in vain. I told this to his parents. Special young man, and I have to say special parents, special people. Otto did not die in vain. He had a lot to do with us being here today.
The U.S. military presence in South Korea
I have to be honest, and I used to say this during my campaign, as you know probably better than most — I want to get our soldiers out. I want to bring our soldiers back home. We have right now 32,000 soldiers in South Korea, and I’d like to be able to bring them back home. But that’s not part of the equation right now. At some point I hope it will be, but not right now.
We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we’ll be saving a tremendous amount of money, plus I think it’s very provocative.
On the G-7 photo that drew attention online
We finished the meeting, really, everybody was happy and I asked for changes, I demanded changes and those changes were made. In fact, the picture with Angela Merkel, who I get along with very well, where I’m sitting there like this. That picture was, we’re waiting for the document, because I want to see the final document as changed by the changes that I requested.
Those were very friendly — I know it didn’t look friendly and I know it was being reported sort of nasty both ways. I was angry at her or she — actually, we were just talking, the whole group, about something unrelated to everything, very friendly, waiting for the document to come back so that I could read it before I leave. Anyway.
I left and it was very friendly. When I got onto the plane, I think that Justin probably didn’t know that Air Force One has about 20 televisions, and I see the television and he’s giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the United States.
And I say, “push him around”? We just shook hands. It was very friendly.
On calling Kim “very talented”
He is very talented. Anybody that takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age, and is able to run it and run it tough, I don’t say it was nice or I don’t say anything about it, he ran it — very few people at that age, you can take one out of 10,000 probably couldn’t do it.
Source : Nytimes
