“Under the right circumstances,” President Donald Trump said Monday he would be open to meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump said in a Bloomberg interview. “If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.”
Later Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that while the meeting could happen under the right circumstances, “those circumstances do not exist now.” He added that there would have to be “significant change” for a meeting between Trump and Kim to be a possibility.
The president’s remarks come after North Korea conducted yet another failed missile test early Saturday, a move Trump said “disrespected the wishes of China.”
As a candidate, Trump had expressed similar willingness to meet the North Korean leader. In a CBS interview that aired Sunday, Trump called the North Korean dictator “a pretty smart cookie,” repeating other compliments of Kim that he made on the campaign trail.
Trump’s positive comments of Kim stand in contrast to those made by other political leaders.
On Friday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged the United Nations to take new sanctions against North Korea. A day earlier, Tillerson said North Korea’s closest major ally, China, has pledged to impose unilateral sanctions should Pyongyang carry out another nuclear test.
House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy said on Thursday that the chamber would hold a vote on sanctions this week, which he said would target North Korea’s shipping industry and “those who employ North Korean slave labor abroad.”