President Trump called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “a madman with nuclear weapons” during a private phone call with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in April, according to a new report.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that it had obtained a transcript of the call between Duterte and Trump, in which Trump questioned whether Kim is “stable.”
“[Kim is] playing with his bombs, his toys,” Trump told Duterte. “His mind is not working well, and he just might go crazy one moment.”
{mosads}“All his rockets are crashing,” Trump added. “That’s the good news. We can’t let a madman with nuclear weapons on the loose like that. We have a lot of firepower, more than he has, times 20 — but we don’t want to use it. [The U.S. has] a lot of firepower over there.”
The Post reported that the Philippines government made a transcript of Trump’s call with Duterte on May 2. It obtained the document Tuesday from a person who asked not to be identified, as the Philippines government had labeled the transcript “confidential” and not for public release.
A senior Trump administration official told the Post that the transcript is accurate but declined to speak on the record about a “leaked document from a foreign government.”
The Associated Press on Monday reported that North Korea says it is ready to start mass-producing a new missile capable of reaching Japan and major U.S. military bases.
Kim reportedly “approved the deployment of this weapon system for action” and said it should “be rapidly mass-produced.”