SINGAPORE — During his Tuesday meeting with Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump took a jab at one of his favorite targets: The media.
“The press, they never stop,” Trump was heard telling Kim, as journalists photographed and shouted questions at the two heads of state minutes after they met for the first time.
More than 2,500 members of the press have traveled to Singapore to cover the historic summit. Most have been covering the event from the media center set up by the Singapore government in downtown Singapore.
“I’ll tell you when they’re out,” Trump later said to the North Korean leader, apparently in reference to the press in the room, according to CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who was at the hotel where the two world leaders met Tuesday.
Acosta later added that Trump and Kim had allowed Singapore government TV cameras to capture their working lunch, but not White House pool journalists.
North Korea, one of the world’s most repressive media environments, was ranked 180 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ 2018 World Press Freedom Index. The United States was ranked 45th in the index. Reporters Without Borders said press freedoms in the U.S. has steadily declined under Trump.