President Joe Biden made a feigned swipe at former President Donald Trump, criticizing his former predecessor’s position on North Korea.
Biden gave a joint press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday. The two discussed “total denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, including North Korea.
Biden said he would not meet with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader unless he agreed to discuss nuclear weapons. Trump met with Kim three times during his presidency.
“If there was a commitment on which we met, then I would meet with [him],” Biden said, Newsweek reported.
“And the commitment has to be that there is discussion about his nuclear arsenal.”
Biden then alluded to Trump, critiquing the former president.
“What I would not do is what has been done in the recent past,” Biden said. “I would not give him all he’s looking for, international recognition as legitimate, and give him what allowed him to move in a direction of appearing to be more serious about what he wasn’t at all serious about.”
Trump first met with Kim in Singapore in the summer of 2018, becoming the first United States president to do so. Trump also held a meeting with Kim in Hanoi in February 2019. And in June of 2019, the two met in the Korean Peninsula at the Demilitarized Zone.
During the meeting, Trump took a few steps across the DMZ line. He would be the first president to do so.
Though the meeting did not achieve its intended goals, it did open up relations between the two countries.
During a rally in West Virginia on Sept. 29, 2018, Trump said jokingly, “I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth. And then we fell in love, OK? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
In February 2019, Trump went on detailing his relationship with Kim in favorable terms.
“It’s a very interesting thing to say, but I’ve developed a very, very good relationship,” Trump said. “We’ll see what that means. But he’s never had a relationship with anybody from this country and hasn’t had lots of relationships anywhere.”
