- President Donald Trump returned from his Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un saying he wanted the US to treat him the way the North Korean people treat their leader.
- Trump said Kim's people "sit up at attention" when he speaks, and Trump wants "my people to do the same."
- Trump later told a reporter he was being sarcastic.
- Trump previously was reported to have admired North Korea's propaganda channel for lavishing praise on Kim.
President Donald Trump returned from his Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with an apparent new respect for the dictator's control over his people.
"He is the strong head," Trump said of Kim during a surprise appearance Friday on Fox News. "Don't let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."
Trump later told a reporter he was being sarcastic.
"I'm kidding. You don't understand sarcasm," he said.
Yet Trump's comment on Fox News followed other musings he apparently made during the Singapore trip while watching a bit of North Korean television including the news anchor Ri Chun Hee, who delivers propaganda on behalf of Kim's government.
North Korean news, which is entirely state-run, shines only a positive light on Kim and the country. As Trump watched, according to The Washington Post, he remarked about Ri's praise of Kim and suggested she could work for Fox News.
North Korea's news doesn't just give its citizens state-approved information. It also tells them how to they're expected to think about that news. Any deviation from the state-approved script can land a North Korean citizen in a political prison, where the treatment is said to be on par with that of Nazi concentration camps.
In the US, Fox News is routinely criticized for its coverage of Trump. Fox News has gotten greater access to Trump than any other news outlet since his campaign.
He is said to obsess over loyalty, with a report this week saying that during his presidency, a senior adviser to the State Department started monitoring the social-media feeds of career diplomats and American employees of international institutions to grade their loyalty to Trump.
Trump, a democratically elected leader, appointed his Cabinet with the approval of the Senate. He has the power to remove most State Department workers without oversight.
Here's Trump on Fox:
Trump praises Kim Jong Un and wishes Americans were as compliant to their leader as North Koreans: "He is the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."pic.twitter.com/kqmsCwpzDw
— Zack Ford (@ZackFord) June 15, 2018
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