President Donald Trump hit former President Obama Saturday for giving away billions to Iran while he has given nothing but a meeting to North Korea and seen tangible progress.
“We’re doing great with North Korea,” Trump told a packed West Virginia crowd rallying for Republican Senate candidate Patrick Morrissey who is challenging Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin.
“For 80 years they’ve been working on this stuff and for 25 years they’ve been working on missiles and nuclear, you got nowhere,” president Trump said of America’s history with North Korea. “They wouldn’t even answer our president’s phone calls. When they called they told them don’t call us.”
“Yes I agree the rhetoric was unbelievably harsh in the beginning, but we have a very good relationship,” Trump admitted. “We were going to war with North Korea. That was what was going to happen. Millions of people would have been killed.”
He mentioned as he has before, President Barack Obama’s comments to him during the presidential transition. Obama alerted Trump to the urgent pressing problem of North Korea.
“Yes, I came in and took a very hard position, very hard position,” said Trump. “And you know what? Now we have this great relationship and let’s see what happens.”
“I got the hostages back for nothing, Obama paid 1.8 billion,” president Trump said comparing his handling of North Korea to Obama’s handling of Iran. “I got it back for nothing, right? We got the remains of our great heroes back from many, many years.” His comments were met with cheers from the crowd.
“You don’t have any more nuclear testing. In fact they’re closing up a lot of the sites,” Trump said of progress with North Korea. “You don’t have rockets going up. You don’t have missiles going up.”
“I like him, he likes me. am I allowed to say that?” Trump said of North Korean chairman Kim Jong-Un. “We’ve come a long way.”
“Now I’m not saying what’s going to happen,” the president made clear. He said his meeting with Kim is “driving them crazy,” apparently referring to the media.
“Now Obama with the Iran deal gave them 150 billion dollars and gave 1.8 billion in cash, in cash, in cash, you know how much money that is? and nobody said he gave up too much, except me, that’s why I ended the [Iran nuclear] deal. I ended it,” said Trump.
“I was really being tough and so was he,” Trump said of early interactions with Chairman Kim. “We would go back and forth and then we fell in love, ok? K?” His comments elicited laughter from the crowd. “No really, he wrote me beautiful letters. and they’re great letters. we fell in love,” said Trump who mocked the media. He predicted the media would report him saying he and Kim fell in love and call Trump’s comment not “presidential.”
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook