Donald Trump is coming under fire for bragging about how well he got along with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
The former president told podcaster Tim Pool that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had warned him that North Korea was the “single greatest threat” facing the nation.
But Trump said he turned it around with his personal approach to Kim.
“It boiled down to something that was very beautiful, the way it happened, and I got along with him very well,” Trump said in an interview released on Monday, claiming that if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016 the world instead would have faced nuclear war.
Trump noted he and Kim exchanged insults early on, but then their relationship “morphed.”
“He respected me, I respected him,” Trump said, calling Kim a “very smart guy, very strong guy” and the “absolute leader” of his country.
Trump has repeatedly praised Kim and spoke highly of his relationship with the dictator, at one point saying “we fell in love.”
Trump told author Bob Woodward that he had “chemistry” with Kim.
“The word chemistry. You meet somebody and you have a good chemistry,” he said. “You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s all going to happen.”
However, Kim rules one of the world’s most closed nations with an iron fist, using public executions, forced labour camps, political prisons and torture against those perceived as a threat.
Trump’s critics slammed him for cozying up to a brutal regime: