The Atlantic

Trump Sides With North Korea Against the CIA

The president responded to reports that Kim Jong Un’s brother had been an American asset by reassuring the strongman he would not allow such spying in the future.
Source: Leah Millis / Reuters

For the second time in two weeks, President Donald Trump interrupted a busy schedule of trashing Joe Biden to say nice things about the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

But Trump’s decision, during remarks in Japan in May, to side with Kim over Biden was a brazen but unsurprising violation of the tradition that “politics ends at the water’s edge,” whereas his comments today were far more baffling.

Two accounts, a newreporter Anna Fifield and a , report that Kim’s brother Kim Jong Nam was a CIA informant. Kim Jong Nam was killed in a shocking chemical-weapons attack in the Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017. Trump was asked about the revelation as he left the White House for a trip to Iowa, and his answer was jarring.

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