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Trump said he had ‘good chemistry’ with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and compared it to meeting a woman when ‘in one second, you know’ and called him ‘cunning and crafty,’ Bob Woodward’s new audiobook claims
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Donald Trump claimed that he had ‘good chemistry’ with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward has revealed in a clip from his audiobook. The former president told Woodward: ‘I’m the only one he deals with,’ in reference to the leader of the pariah state with whom Trump attempted to broker a peace deal. Pictured: Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone in 2019.

‘The word chemistry. You meet somebody and you have a good chemistry,’ Trump said in an audio clip released by Woodward and aired on CNN in which he likened meeting Kim to the experience of developing chemistry with a woman. ‘You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s all going to happen,’ he added. Woodward also told Trump that the CIA thinks Kim is ‘ultimately stupid’ – a claim which Trump refuted, instead describing the North Korean leader as ‘cunning’ and ‘crafty’ and ‘very smart.’

While in office, Trump attempted to improve relations with North Korea, personally traveling to meet Kim, and also encouraged the despot to enter peace talks with South Korea. North Korean-US relations appeared better in the latter stages of Trump’s presidency, with the two leaders maintaining frequent correspondence, but the former president could not prevent Kim from proceeding with the nation’s nuclear weapons program. Relations have declined dramatically under the Biden administration. The pariah state has test-fired a record number of missiles this year, with one recent ICBM launch over Japan prompting widespread evacuations and strong condemnation from US, Japanese and South Korean officials.

The latest recording released by Woodward (pictured) comes shortly after he revealed that the former president knew the letters he exchanged with Kim – which were among documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago – were classified, but showed them to Woodward anyway. In December 2019, Trump showed Woodward the ‘love letters’ Kim had written to him, but seemed to acknowledge he was not supposed to be showing them around. ‘Treat them with respect, and don’t say I gave them to you, okay? But I’ll let you see them,’ Trump said after her handed the journalist a stack of letters.
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One month later in January 2020 on a phone call Woodward pressed Trump to show him the letters he had written back to Kim. ‘Oh, those are so top secret,’ Trump replied, according to excerpts from ‘The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Trump.’ The audiobook includes more than eight hours of the Woodward’s raw interviews with Trump interspersed with the journalist’s commentary. The comments reveal Trump was aware the 27 letters he and Kim exchanged were classified, and took them to Mar-a-Lago anyway. Trump has repeatedly insisted that none of the documents he improperly took from the White House were classified.

Instead, he claims that he had the power to declassify documents ‘even just by thinking about it.’ ‘There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,’ Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in September. ‘You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it. In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified,’ Trump said. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) clawed back 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s Florida property in January, among them the letters between him and Kim.

The FBI and Justice Department executed an unprecedented search warrant on the former president’s residence in August, turning up 103 documents marked classified and 11,000 not marked classified as part of an ongoing probe into Trump’s handling of the sensitive material. English translations of the letters were printed in 2020 showing Trump and the Korean dictator fawning over each other, with Kim referring to the American president as ‘Your Excellency’ and wrote that the ‘deep and special friendship between us will work as a magical force.’ Despite the seeming mutual fondness depicted in letters between the two leaders and two sit-down meetings, North Korea continued to ratchet up its nuclear program throughout the Trump administration.

During their December 2019 meeting Trump asked Woodward what he had done with the letters, asking if he had made a ‘photostat of them or something,’ referring to a photocopy. ‘No, I dictated them into a tape recorder,’ Woodward said. After Trump agreed to share the letters he wrote to Kim, Woodward said he returned to the White House and read the new set of letters into his tape recorder. Woodward said he saw no classification markings on the documents, though officials have indicated they were classified. In that December 2019 interview, Woodward pressed Trump about North Korea’s nuclear program, prompting the then-president to boast about the US’s seemingly new – and likely highly classified – weapons system. Pictured: A surface-to-surface tactical guided missile test-fire conducted by the Academy of Defense Science of the DPRK at an undisclosed location, taken on January 27, 2022.

‘I have built a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,’ Trump told Woodward. ‘We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.’ In a moment of self-awareness, Trump reflected that he seemed to get along with world leaders better ‘the tougher and meaner they are.’ ‘I get along very well with Erdogan, even though you’re not supposed to because everyone says what a horrible guy. But you know for me it works out good,’ Trump said in a January 2020 interview. ‘It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know?’ he continued. ‘Explain that to me someday, okay. But maybe it’s not a bad thing. The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.’

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