Former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly played on Donald Trump’s vanity to ease tensions between the former president and North Korean despot Kim Jong-un, according to New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt.
Trump’s abusive rhetoric about Kim had “gone out of control” when former four-star Marine General Kelly first joined the Trump administration in 2017, Schmidt told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Thursday.
Kelly was “incredibly concerned” that Trump would “publicly incite Kim to war,” Schmidt continued, noting that the then president was not moved by his chief of staff’s warnings of mass deaths in North Korea or the possible stagnation of the economy.
Trump only softened Kim when Kelly, per Schmidt, said, “Look, why don’t you be his friend? No one in American history has done that. You say all those things about what a great deal maker you are, why don’t you try that?
“Kelly knew it would never lead to a denuclearized North Korea, but he knew it would reverse the public and private rhetoric coming out of Trump’s mouth that could easily get out of hand,” the journalist told Wallace.
“It was only through Kelly, who said to Trump, ‘You can be the deal maker. Go all the way back to Eisenhower. Nobody has done this. You can do this.’ And Trump goes along with that,” he added.
Schmidt details the cause of Trump’s change of tone on Kim in the updated paperback edition of his book, “Donald Trump V. The United States,” writing how Trump had also suggested bombing North Korea and placing the blame elsewhere to lay.
The “turnaround between the rhetoric and the love letters” was “one of these mysteries of the Trump administration,” he said.
