Rudy Giuliani said the U.S. would not meet with North Korea under threat of nuclear war. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Giuliani: Kim Jong Un got 'on his hands and knees and begged' for Trump meeting

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un got “on his hands and knees and begged” for his meeting with President Donald Trump to be rescheduled after Trump canceled it, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday.

Giuliani, now a member of the president’s outside legal team, recommended the Trump administration adopt a similar approach in negotiations with Palestinians in future peace negotiations.


“Well, Kim Jong Un got back on his hands and knees and begged for it, which is exactly the position you want to put him in,” Giuliani said in Tel Aviv, where he was speaking at a conference.

His remarks were previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The off-again-on-again meeting between Trump and Kim was originally announced earlier this spring and more officially put on the schedule last month for June 12 in Singapore. Trump abruptly called off the meeting with a letter last month, but even then he and others in his administration left open the possibility that the summit could still be mounted.

After Kim Yong Chol, a top North Korean official, visited the U.S. last week with a letter for Trump from Kim Jong Un, the meeting was put back on the schedule.

Under successive members of the Kim family, around whom a nationwide cult of personality is built, North Korea has regularly shown a willingness to engage in bellicose rhetoric, especially in response to insults of its leader. Giuliani, in the same remarks in which he suggested Kim had “begged” for a meeting with Trump, said the U.S. would not meet with North Korea under threat of nuclear war.

“They also said they were going to go to nuclear war with us, they were going to defeat us in a nuclear war,” Giuliani, who was once under consideration to be Trump’s secretary of state, said. “We said we’re not going to have a summit under those circumstances.”