In new audio recordings released by journalist Bob Woodward, former President Donald Trump likened his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to having “chemistry” when first meeting a woman.
In an interview from early 2020, Woodward told Trump that the CIA described Kim as “cunning, crafty but ultimately stupid,” according to excerpts of Woodward’s recordings published by the Washington Post on Sunday.
“I disagree,” Trump answered. “He’s cunning. He’s crafty. And he’s very smart.”
“Why does the CIA say that?” Woodward asked.
“Because they don’t know. Okay?” Trump replied. “Because they don’t know. They have no idea. I’m the only one that knows. I’m the only one he deals with. He won’t deal with anybody else.”
He added: “The word chemistry. You meet somebody and you have a good chemistry. You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s all going to happen.”
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI via Getty Images
Woodward then asked if all this was designed to drive Kim to the negotiating table.
“No. No. It was designed for whatever reason, it was designed,” Trump said. “Who knows? Instinctively. Let’s talk instinct.”
Woodward is releasing the tapes from 20 interviews he conducted with Trump from 2016 to 2020 as a new audiobook, titled “The Trump Tapes.” According to the veteran journalist, the interviews show Trump “relishing the authority of the presidency and relying on his personal instincts as the basis for major decisions.”
The exchange about Kim, for example, showed his hallmark “single-handed and impulsive approach,” Woodward wrote in the Post, which “deeply worried and even traumatized his national security team.”
As president, Trump routinely showed deference to Kim and other authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while alienating allies such as Canada, France and Germany.
He romanticized his relationship with Kim in particular, boasting of the “beautiful letters” the dictator had written him and telling supporters that “we fell in love.”
In another recording from Woodward’s 2020 interviews, Trump reflected that the “tougher and meaner” world leaders are, “the better I get along with them.”
