Donald Trump Said North Korea Wasn’t a Nuclear Threat. Mike Pompeo Just Contradicted Him on CNN.

“I know precisely what he said.”

Susan Walsh/AP

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President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo aren’t on the same page on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, just days away from a major summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Vietnam. In a Sunday morning interview on CNN, Pompeo was asked if he believed if the dictatorship still posed a “nuclear threat.”

Pompeo said that it did. When pressed by host Jake Tapper about Trump’s past assertion to the contrary, Pompeo told Tapper that Trump had never said such a thing. “I know precisely what he said,” Pompeo responded.

But Trump did say that. After the much-hyped 2018 summit between the two heads of state in Singapore, Trump announced that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea” [sic]:

There’s a significant difference posing a nuclear threat and no longer posing a nuclear threat, inasmuch as there’s a real difference between “the annihilation of the planet” and “Wednesday.” The president and his secretary of state have three more days to get their position straight before the big meeting.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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