Trump blasts media as America’s ‘biggest enemy’ for North Korea coverage
President Trump posted a series of tweets about his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un as he arrived back in Washington, D.C. Wednesday morning, including blasting the media as “our country’s biggest enemy” for its coverage of the historic summit.
“So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN. They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea,” the president wrote. “500 days ago they would have ‘begged’ for this deal-looked like war would break out.”
He continued: “Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!”
While Trump’s meeting with Kim was historic, many critics say it fell short of expectations and the optimism the president had about the summit.
The two leaders signed a vague four-point statement in which North Korea reaffirmed its commitment to work toward “complete denuclearization” but the promise came without a timetable or mention of any verification of the North’s progress.
The joint statement was also less specific than the agreement North Korea signed at the so-called six-party talks in 2005. Then, Pyongyang promised to abandon all nuclear weapons, to return to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to international inspections.
Many say the summit, instead, gave more legitimacy to Kim as he stood as an equal alongside a U.S. president and posed for photos. Trump said he was “honored” to be there and described Kim, a despotic adversary, as a “talented” leader who could be trusted.
Past American presidents have refused face-to-face meetings with North Korea’s leadership over fears of legitimizing a totalitarian state that has admitted to state-sponsored kidnapping and sent thousands of its citizens to forced labor camps.
In Trump’s series of tweets after he landed at 6:10 a.m., he applauded his efforts and claimed North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat” and everyone could “sleep well tonight.”
Trump has long disparaged members of the media as “fake news” and on multiple occasions called the press an “enemy of the American people.”