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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump at the end of their summit in Singapore in June. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters)
Felicia Sonmez
National Journalist in the Washington Post Political Press Team
President Trump said Tuesday that his next summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will not be held until mid-term elections next month.
"I just can not leave now," Trump told the press onboard Air Force One, saying his busy campaign program made him too busy to hold a meeting.
Trump organized four rallies of Republican candidates across the country last week. He is proposing four more this week, including an event Tuesday night in Iowa.
Earlier Tuesday, at a meeting of the Oval Office with outgoing US Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump said his staff was reviewing "three or four sites" for the summit. He also predicted that North Korea "will be a very prosperous country".
"I think the economic success will be incredible, and I want that to happen," said Trump. "I think it's going to be good."
[Pompeo says Trump, Kim believe ‘real progress’ can be made at second summit]
Relations between Washington and Pyongyang have been hot and cold in recent months. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's trip to North Korea last July ended with officials accusing the United States of demanding the denuclearization of "gangster-like" claims. A visit of Pompeo in August was brutally canceled.
But things seemed to get better this week.
On Sunday, Pompeo spent more than three hours with Kim in Pyongyang, during talks that he described as a "productive" step to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. . Pompeo also announced that both parties had agreed to establish "work level" teams in order to set the date and time of a second summit following the Trump-Kim meeting from June to Singapore.
Asked on Tuesday about the potential location of a second summit, Trump said he is ready to meet in North Korea or the United States, including at the Trump Mar-a-Lago club. Palm Beach, Florida.
"I think in the end we will have a lot of meetings on American soil and on their soil, just – you know, it's a two-way street," he said.
Trump has another big summit on its agenda after the mid-session: the White House announced in July that it was pushing for 2019 a second meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Simon Denyer in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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