Phone call Trump said he had with North Korean regime was actually with South Korea's president

(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

published 6 March 2018

President Trump incorrectly described a phone call he had with South Korean President Moon Jae-in as being with someone from North Korea, a National Security Council official said Monday.

While discussing North Korea on Saturday, Trump said "they, by the way, called up a couple of days ago. 'We would like to talk.' And I said, 'So would we, but you have to de-nuke, you have to de-nuke.'" In reality, the call on March 1 was with Moon, the official told South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. "President Trump did not have a call with the North Koreans," the official confirmed. The leaders did talk about North Korea, and Moon told Trump about the envoy he was sending to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong Un.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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