Trump Dismisses Kim Jong Un’s Atrocities: ‘He’s a Tough Guy’

In an interview with Fox News immediately after his summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, President Donald Trump appeared to dismiss North Korea’s human rights violations and Kim’s atrocities against his own people.

“Hey, he’s a tough guy. 

When you take over a country—a tough country, tough people—and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that. 

So he’s a very smart guy. He’s a great negotiator,” Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier. When pressed further, Trump responded: 

“Yeah, but so have other people done some really bad things. I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.” 

Last year, the president made a similar argument when dismissing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s human rights violations. “What do you think, our country's so innocent?” he said at the time.