US President Donald Trump has told a campaign rally that he and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un “fell in love” in their denuclearisation letters to one another.
Speaking on Saturday at a Make America Great Again event in Wheeling, West Virginia, Trump said: “I like him. He likes me. I guess that’s OK. Am I allowed to say that?
“I was really being tough, and so was he. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love, OK?”
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Vox News reports that the audience initially laughed, but that Trump then “reiterated the point - and acknowledged it would probably raise some eyebrows”.
“No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love,” he said. “But you know what? Now they’ll say, ‘Donald Trump said they fell in love, how horrible. How horrible is that? So unpresidential.’”
“Why has President Trump given up so much?” Trump continued in a mock newsreader voice, before adding: “I didn’t give up anything.”
Following months of insults traded between the two, Trump and Kim held a historic summit in Singapore this June, as part of the president’s push to make the North Korean regime dismantle its nuclear programme.
The Trump administration is preparing for a second summit with Kim to continue the denuclearisation talks. The time and location have yet to be announced, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The planned meeting comes amid growing criticism of Trump for repeatedly praising the North Korean leader, with his latest comments drawing further ire.
Many people - including veteran newsreader Dan Rather - have expressed their concerns on Twitter.
Meanwhile, despite the apparent warming of the relationship between North Korea and the US, Kim has not yet complied with Trump’s request for a complete inventory of his country’s weapons programmes, nor begun dismantling them.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, a North Korean representative said the nation will not stand down its nuclear weapons until it has “sufficient trust” in the US, and called on the Trump administration to drop “coercive methods” such as sanctions.
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