Update 11:03 a.m. ET: Trump confirmed Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un last week in an early morning tweet. He said the "meeting went very smoothly."CIA Director Mike Pompeo travelled to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un earlier this month in a top-secret visit that was reportedly intended to lay the ground for President Donald Trump to meet with Kim later this year, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.Trump appeared to accidentally confirm the Post's report — which had not yet been released — in comments to the press Tuesday, responding “Yes” when asked if he’d spoken with Kim.Trump later amended the statement, saying, “Well, let’s leave it a little bit short of that.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders then clarified his statement significantly, saying, “The president said the administration has had talks at the highest levels and added they were not with him directly.”
Advertisement
The CIA, the White House, and the North Korean government all declined to comment to the Washington Post.Trump nominated Pompeo to serve as secretary of state last month after the president abruptly fired former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over Twitter. Pompeo has not yet been confirmed.The United States’ relationship with North Korea since Trump took office has been rocky, to put it mildly: Trump called Kim “Rocket Man,” dubbed North Korea a “depleted and food-starved regime,” and tweeted that he “would NEVER call [Kim] ‘short and fat.’” But after the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics gave North Korea and South Korea a chance to mend diplomatic fences, South Korea stepped in to help negotiate Trump’s highly anticipated meeting with Kim.Cover image: Michael Pompeo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. secretary of state nominee for the Trump administration, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, April 12, 2018. (Photo by Cheriss May) (Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)