In new audio recordings launched by journalist Bob Woodward, former President Donald Trump likened his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to having “chemistry” when first assembly a lady.
In an interview from early 2020, Woodward instructed Trump that the CIA described Kim as “crafty, artful however in the end silly,” in keeping with excerpts of Woodward’s recordings revealed by the Washington Publish on Sunday.
“I disagree,” Trump answered. “He’s crafty. He’s artful. And he’s very good.”
“Why does the CIA say that?” Woodward requested.
“As a result of they don’t know. Okay?” Trump replied. “As a result of they don’t know. They don’t know. I’m the one one which is aware of. I’m the one one he offers with. He received’t cope with anyone else.”
He added: “The phrase chemistry. You meet someone and you’ve got chemistry. You meet a lady. In a single second, you understand whether or not or not it’s all going to occur.”
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI through Getty Photographs
Woodward then requested if all this was designed to drive Kim to the negotiating desk.
“No. No. It was designed for no matter motive, it was designed,” Trump mentioned. “Who is aware of? Instinctively. Let’s discuss intuition.”
Woodward is releasing the tapes from 20 interviews he carried out with Trump from 2016 to 2020 as a brand new audiobook, titled “The Trump Tapes.” In response to the veteran journalist, the interviews present Trump “relishing the authority of the presidency and counting on his private instincts as the premise for main choices.”
The trade about Kim, for instance, confirmed his hallmark “single-handed and impulsive strategy,” Woodward wrote within the Publish, which “deeply nervous and even traumatized his nationwide safety group.”
As president, Trump routinely confirmed deference to Kim and different authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whereas alienating allies resembling Canada, France and Germany.
He romanticized his relationship with Kim particularly, boasting of the “lovely letters” the dictator had written him and telling supporters that “we fell in love.”
In one other recording from Woodward’s 2020 interviews, Trump mirrored that the “harder and meaner” world leaders are, “the higher I get together with them.”