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WASHINGTON – The letters North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump exchanged before and after their meetings in 2018 and 2019 were effusive in their praise for each other, investigative journalist Bob Woodward wrote in a book published on Wednesday. Tuesday (September 15). ).
Kim’s letters were masterpieces of wordy flattery that bordered on romantic prose, wrote Woodward, a veteran journalist best known for his reporting on the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974.
Rage, his second book on the Trump presidency, was based on 18 interviews with Trump. They showed him 27 letters between Trump and Kim, 25 of which had not been reported before.
The new details in the letters offered new insights into the bond between the two leaders at the time, providing the impetus for diplomacy between the United States and North Korea. Since then, progress has stalled, and critics then and now argue that the three leaders’ meetings were flashy but of little substance.
“Flowery and bombastic, they trace how the two forged a personal and emotional bond,” Woodward wrote.
“Trump has personally said that they are ‘love letters’. They are more than that: they reveal the decision of both to become friends. Whether it is genuine or not, probably only history will tell.”
US intelligence analysts could not conclude who wrote the letters that came from Kim, but “marveled at the ability someone brought to find the exact mix of flattery while appealing to Trump’s sense of grandiosity and being central. of history, “Woodward wrote.
The Singapore Summit on June 12, 2018 was crucial, Trump told Woodward. “We really got along. It was great chemistry.”
In a Christmas letter half a year after the summit, Kim described the meeting as “reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy movie.”
He wrote: “Even now I cannot forget that moment in history when I firmly held His Excellency’s hand in the beautiful and sacred place as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day.”
Woodward observed that the two leaders often described their diplomatic relations as an effort by us against the world, while discussing the give and take of denuclearization.
At least twice after the Singapore Summit, Trump told Kim in letters that they were the only ones who could end the hostility between their countries, praising their “unique style and special friendship” and promising that Kim would always be. his friend. .
After their third meeting, an impromptu but historic summit on the North and South Korean border on June 30 last year, Trump sent a letter to Kim, praising him and the meeting’s success.
He attached a copy of the front page of The New York Times, which featured a large image of the two leaders, and wrote in marker: “President, great photo of you, great moment.”
Two days later, Trump wrote again, this time attaching 22 photos of his meeting with his letter.
But when Kim responded, more than a month later, on August 5, relations appeared to have cooled off, and the North Korean leader was upset that the military exercises between the United States and South Korea had not come to a complete halt.
In this letter, Mr. Kim was courteous but “sounded like a disappointed friend or lover,” Woodward wrote.
Reflecting on the Trump-Kim relationship Tuesday, Woodward commented on “the nature of how they spoke and how they supported each other and how they maintained that they were friends and trusted each other.”
It was an interesting and original experiment in diplomacy, he said at a virtual event organized by the Washington Post, where he is an associate editor.
“They loved it,” he said. “Trump felt very much that it worked, we had no war. You have to give him credit, at this point there has been no war.”
He added: “We don’t know where this is going to go. The relationship between Trump and Kim Jong Un is not good right now, there is a lot of tension, so we will see that.”
Woodward also noted that in his interview with Trump at the Singapore Summit, he had to divert the president’s focus from the public relations extravaganza to the background of the meeting.
Trump said he was deeply impressed by the wall of cameras when he met and shook hands with Kim at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island, Woodward wrote.
He claimed it was among the most cameras he had ever seen, even more than at the Academy Awards in Hollywood.
“You know, it was the most cameras. I think I’ve seen more cameras than any human being in history. There are like hundreds of them. It’s free. I get it for free. It costs me nothing,” Trump said.
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