President Trump confirmed Wednesday he’ll sit down again with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un before the year is out — their fourth meeting overall and first since Trump returned to the White House.
“Yeah, I will be,” Trump told reporters when asked whether a summit was coming.
No date has been set, but the president has directed aides to make contact with Pyongyang, and the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China this November is the leading candidate for a venue.
The White House and North Korea have not officially confirmed plans.
Trump is moving fast to clear the diplomatic runway. He scaled back U.S. participation in the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises with South Korea — cutting the usual ten-day drills roughly in half — citing his relationship with Kim directly.
“Based on my very good relationship with” Kim, Trump said, adding that the longstanding exercises sent a “totally inappropriate and hostile signal” to the North.
South Korea’s absence from the Iran conflict was also a factor, he said.
Then came the headline moment: Trump disclosed that North Korea now has 57 nuclear warheads — the first time any sitting U.S. official has put a specific number on the record.
“I get along with him,” Trump said of Kim. “And you know what, the fact that I get along with him — that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons. Should have never allowed it to happen. But he’s got them.”
Past intelligence assessments have put the North Korean arsenal at between 50 and 60 warheads. Trump’s figure lands inside that range — and his willingness to say it out loud signals a president who wants Kim to know he’s dealing from full information, not diplomatic fog.
The goal, according to reporting, is to restart denuclearization talks. Trump’s three summits with Kim during his first term produced no concrete results, and North Korea has only expanded its program since.
Kim has publicly ruled out any negotiations premised on giving up his weapons and has pushed instead for international recognition as a nuclear state.
Trump’s answer to that: “I know him well. It’s going to be fine.”
Whether it will be is another matter. Allies in South Korea and Japan are already quietly rattled by the drill cutbacks, questioning whether Washington’s security commitments in the region remain firm.
The president is betting that personal diplomacy with Kim — the same bet he made in his first term — can produce results this time that eluded him before.
