Critics from all along the political spectrum slammed President Trump on Thursday for taking North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “at his word” when Kim claimed he didn’t know about the torture that led to the death of American college student Otto Warmbier.
“I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen,” Trump said at a press conference Thursday in Hanoi, Vietnam, following a summit with Kim.
The rebuke came swiftly.
“Walking away from the summit was better than making a bad deal. It’s also the result of a poorly planned strategy,” tweeted Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff. “But accepting Kim’s denial of involvement in Warmbier’s death? Detestable, and harkens back to Trump’s duplicitous acceptances of denials from other dictators.”
Republican former Pennsylvania Congressman Rick Santorum called Trump “reprehensible” as he tore into him on CNN Thursday.
“This is the conundrum of Donald Trump for many of us who like his policies and don’t like a lot of the things he does and says,” Santorum, now a TV talking head, told the network.
“But, this is reprehensible, what he just did. He gave cover, as you said, to a leader who knew very well what was going on with Otto Warmbier. And again, I don’t understand why the president does this. I am disappointed, to say the least, that he did it.”
Democratic House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi questioned the commander-in-chief’s pattern of deferring to despotic leaders.
“I don’t think Kim Jong Un is on the level,” she said during a Thursday press conference. “And the president has believed [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as opposed to believing his own intelligence leadership on such subjects. It’s strange.
“There is something wrong with Putin, Kim Jong Un — in my view, thugs — that the president chooses to believe.”
Even Trump’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, seemed to question the president’s decision.
“Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime. Our hearts are with the Warmbier family for their strength and courage. We will never forget Otto. ❤️🇺🇸”
Trump should have used the summit to call out the hermit nation’s human-rights abuses, according to Victor Cha, the former head of President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.
“It is not that hard to make a statement of regret,” Cha told MSNBC. “That is low hanging fruit.”
Korean courts sentenced Warmbier, 22, to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly trying to steal a propaganda poster on a trip to Pyongyang in 2016. He served 18 months behind bars, but Trump arranged his transfer back to the U.S. in June 2017 Warmbier had been in a coma for almost a year.
He died a week later.
Korean officials claimed he fell into the coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill — but he was reportedly subjected to severe beatings.
Warmbier’s family sued North Korea, and a district court judge in December ordered the hermit kingdom to cough up $501 million.