North Korea’s nuclear program not a problem ‘as long as I’m around’: Trump
Donald Trump has defended North Korea’s rights to have nuclear weapons as he faces flak for starting a war with Iran on the issue.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, the president was asked why Iran could not have nuclear weapons but North Korea could.
Donald Trump started a war with Iran over their nuclear program but defended North Korea’s. AP Photo/Alex Brandon
"He happens to be a friend of mine, Kim Jong-un," Trump replied.
"He likes Trump. (He) doesn't like a lot of people. I'm about the only person in the world that he likes.
"And I like him."
Trump then inferred that North Korea would not be a problem so long as he was president.
"As long as I'm around, he's going to be fine," the 80-year-old president said.
"You know why? Because he respects me and he likes me."
The apparent friendship between the two is a striking turnaround from 2017, when a war of words escalated to threats of a nuclear war between the US and North Korea.
Trump described Kim as “obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people”.
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un at an earlier meeting. AAP
He then told the United Nations he would “totally destroy” North Korea.
Kim responded by describing Trump as a feeble old man.
"I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire," Kim said.
But the mood between the two has changed, and Trump now speaks far more glowingly of Kim than he does of most other world leaders.
Last month he scaled back military exercises with South Korea, who have had an alliance with the United States since the Korean War.
“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong-un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on August 17.
"These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.
"While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearisation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, 'No thanks!'"
North Korea shows off a powerful ICBM theoretically capable of reaching the US mainland. AP
Trump has made Tehran's purported nuclear ambitions the central justification for his war with Iran.
Iran currently does not have any nuclear weapons, having halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
But its expansion of a uranium enrichment program led to accusations from the US and Israel that it was intending to do so.
Analysts concluded Iran has enough enriched uranium for about ten nuclear weapons.
By contrast, North Korea has an estimated 60 nuclear warheads and the capacity to make many more.
The apparent roadblock to an Iranian nuclear weapons arsenal was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who opposed the program.
But his son Mojtaba Khamenei, who replaced him after the Supreme Leader was killed in an airstrike, is reportedly far more amenable to a nuclear weapons program.
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