Donald Trump (left), Kim Jong Un.Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty; API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty
WhileDonald Trumphas described his correspondence withKim Jong-unas being akin to “love letters,” Watergate journalistBob Woodwardsays there was “nothing substantive” in the 27 letters sent from the North Korean dictator to the former president.
“They really are kind of the fondnesses that teenagers might exchange,” Woodward said in aninterview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’DonnellTuesday night.
“If you read through them, you’d kind of laugh,” Woodward said of the letters. “Because Kim is wooing Trump in a very unsophisticated way and says, ‘Well, if we meet again, it will be out of a fantasy film.’ Which, I guess, is the way Kim thought of it and maybe, to a certain extent, Trump did.”
Woodward recently released audio recordings of more than a dozen interviews he conducted with Trump for his new book,The Trump Tapes.
Among those interviews is a conversation in which Trump shared the letters with Woodward, telling the journalist: “I want you to treat them with respect,” and adding, “But don’t say I gave them to you, okay?”
Trump’s communications with Kim have been well known for years, as the former president often bragged about the “beautiful letters” sent from North Korea during his time in office.
The National Archives and Records Administration then inquired about missing records,ultimately retrieving 15 boxes of documents(including at least one of the letters from Kim) that Trump had brought to his Palm Beach property, Mar-a-Lago a year after he left the presidency.
In later months, federal officials followed up with Trump — reportedly on a tip from an informant that some classified documents still remained at the Palm Beach club — and in August 2022, the FBI conducted asearch of Mar-a-Lago, seeking additional classified materials from the former president’s time in office.
That investigation remains ongoing, and Trump has denied mishandling classified documents, decrying the FBI search as “prosecutorial misconduct.”
But Trump seemed to realize he should not have had Kim’s letters in his possession after leaving the White House.
Trump often took pride in the letters to and from Kim during his time in office, eventweeting two— one from him and one from Kim — that further detailed what the North Korean leader reportedly described as “a special friendship” that had grown since a historic face-to-face meeting in Singapore in June 2018.
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The pair met in person for a second time on Feb. 28, 2019, in Vietnam, and a third time inside the Korean Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea on June 30 later that year. At their third meeting, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to step foot into North Korea when he took20 steps into the country, according toThe New York Times.
In one rally, Trump said he and Kim “fell in love” after those meetings.
source: people.com
