Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Thursday that “Americans know the cruelty” that North Korea’s government inflicted on Otto Warmbier, hours after President Trump said he took Kim Jong Un at his word that the leader was not responsible for Warmbier’s death.
“Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime,” Haley tweeted. “Our hearts are with the Warmbier family for their strength and courage. We will never forget Otto.”
Haley served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under Trump until she resigned late last year. She does not yet have a full-time replacement, though Trump has nominated the ambassador to Canada, Kelly Craft, for the role.
{mosads}Trump sparked bipartisan backlash with his comments at a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he told reporters that Kim had denied involvement in Warmbier’s death, stating, “I will take him at his word.”
“He knew the case very well. But he knew it later,” Trump said of Kim. “And, you know, you’ve got a lot of people. Big country. Lot of people. And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really bad things.”
Warmbier, who was a University of Virginia student, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly attempting to steal a propaganda poster during a January 2016 visit to Pyongyang. He was reportedly in a coma when he was sent back to the U.S. in 2017 and died at age 22 a short time later.
Democrats condemned Trump’s comments as “disgraceful” and “detestable,” and suggested they were the latest example of the president cozying up to authoritarian leaders.
Other conservatives also spoke out against Trump’s comments. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said on CNN that, while Trump deserved credit for walking away from a potentially bad deal on denuclearization, his comments about Warmbier were “reprehensible.”
Haley condemned North Korea’s reported treatment of Warmbier in October, saying, “In North Korea, where American student Otto Warmbier was tortured to death, that was evil.”