President Donald Trump abruptly ended his second summit in Vietnam with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, but he also offered to give him a ride home on Air Force One.
Details of the offer were revealed by Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s top national security advisor on Asia in a BBC series on his foreign policy.
“President Trump offered Kim a lift home on Air Force One,” Pottinger said. “The president knew that Kim had arrived on a multi-day train ride through China into Hanoi and the president said: ‘I can get you home in two hours if you want.'”
Pottinger said that Kim declined the offer.
The incident demonstrates Trump’s personal and unscripted efforts at diplomacy, which shocked his national security experts at the time.
It is highly unlikely that Kim would ever accept the offer, as the notoriously suspicious dictator would not place his life and security in the hands of the Americans.
“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump said after abruptly ending the summit in February 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Kim wanted Trump to lift all of the U.S. sanctions and in exchange, he would dismantle an important North Korean nuclear facility.
“Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that,” Trump said.
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