Donald Trump on Saturday said his summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore would be a “one-time shot”. Speaking to reporters at the G7 summit in La Malbaie, Canada, the US president projected confidence over the prospects for a deal on denuclearization, stating: “I think within the first minute, I’ll know.”
“Just my touch, my feel, that’s what I do,” he said. “How long will it take to figure out if they’re serious? You know, the way they say you know if you’re going to like somebody in the first five seconds, you ever hear that one? I think very quickly I’ll know whether or not something good is going to happen.”
Trump spoke as he prepared to depart for Singapore and the first meeting between a North Korean leader and a sitting US president. The two leaders’ relationship began with a long period of mutual threats and abuse but a surprise and rapid diplomatic thaw has endured despite Trump’s abrupt cancellation of the summit late last month.
“You don’t know, it’s not been done before at this level,” Trump said of attempts to establish peace with a reclusive, authoritarian and nuclear-armed regime. He added: “This is a leader that’s really an unknown personality, people don’t know much about him. I think that he’s going to surprise on the upside, very much on the upside, we’ll see.”
The Trump administration has said it wants a “permanent, verifiable, irreversible” dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and a peace treaty to formally end the Korean war, which ceased only with an armistice in 1953.
“It’s a one-time shot and I think it’s going to work out very well,” Trump said, though he also indicated that the summit may only be a starting point, saying it “may not work out. There’s a good chance it won’t work out. There’s probably an even better chance that it will take a period of time, it’ll be a process.”
The president also downplayed suggestions he was not well prepared, a notion he…
