- President Donald Trump told former White House press secretary Sara Huckabee Sanders to go to North Korea and take “one for the team” after Kim Jong Un looks at her, according to the Guardian in a new memoir.
- “During the summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore in 2018,” Kim laughed and looked up at me, “Sanders said.
- “Well, Sarah, it settles down. You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team!” Trump told him, Sanders said. “Your husband and children will miss you, but you will be the hero of your country!”
- Since Kim and Trump enjoyed a warm relationship, Trump said at a rally in September 2018 that they were “in love.”
- P month journalist Bob Woodward is set to release a book this month that describes his relationship with Trump as being outside the realm of fiction.
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President Donald Trump, a former White House press secretary, told Sarah Huckabee Sanders that Kim Jong Un was going to go to North Korea “one for the team” after appearing wink at him during the 2018 summit, he said in a new book.
A copy of his memoirs by The Guardian, Sanders described an incident with a collection of Trump, Kim and his aides at the summit in Singapore.
He said in a book released next Tuesday that Kim “reluctantly” accepted Trump’s tick tack mint during a conversation session, which blew up dramatically in the air to reassure Kim, it was just a breath mint and not poison.
The pair then talked about sports, including women’s soccer, at which point Sanders “noticed Kim looking at me,” according to The Guardian.
“We made direct eye contact and Kim nodded and appeared to be rolling her eyes at me,” he wrote. “I was stunned. I quickly looked down and continued to take notes.”
He added: “All I could think about was, ‘What just happened? Surely Kim Jong Un just doesn’t mark me !?'”
The former press secretary said that, later in the presidential limousine, he told Trump and John Kelly, who were his staff chiefs at the time, about the incident.
“Kim Jong Un will hit you!” Trump said, according to Sanders. “He did! He hit you!”
Sanders replied, “Sir, please stop.”
“Well, Sarah, it settles down. You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team!” Trump told him, Sanders said. “Your husband and children will miss you, but you will be the hero of your country!”
Trump and Kelly then “cried with laughter,” Sanders said.
Trump was initially hostile to Kim, using a speech at the United Nations in 2017 to nickname him “Rocket Man,” and threatened to take military action against North Korea if his government did not stop its nuclear-weapon development.
But since the pair have enjoyed a warm relationship, the two leaders have been praising each other extensively.
The Singapore Summit was the first of his three meetings during Trump’s presidency. They met again in February 2019 and then in the demilitarized zone in June 2019, when Trump became the first American president to set foot in North Korea.
Trump said at a rally in September 2018 that he and Kim had “fallen in love” and that the North Korean leader had written them “beautiful letters.”
P Trump journalist Bob Woodward’s second book on Trump, “Rage,” describes the contents of the letters, to be published on September 15, and says Kim said his relationship with Trump is beyond “fiction film.”
