President Donald Trump says he doesn’t believe North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un knew about what happened to American student Otto Warmbier during a press conference that occurred in Hanoi very early Thursday morning EST.

“Those prisons are rough, and bad things happen, but I really don’t believe [Kim Jong Un] knew about it.”

Warmbier is an American student who was imprisoned in North Korea after he was charged with stealing one of the communist regime’s propaganda posters and was released after being detained in North Korea for approximately 17 months. Almost immediately after arriving back in the United States, Warmbier passed away as it was announced he had been in a coma for almost a year.

Trump clarified on Kim’s role, saying “I don’t believe he would have allowed that,” and “he felt very badly about it.” Echoing words he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin about Russia’s role in interfering in the 2016 election, Trump added: “he tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word”.

At the time of Warmbier’s death, Trump said how “a lot of bad things happened” to Warmbier while he was in North Korea, which he called a “brutal regime.”

The second summit between Trump and Kim Jung Un appears to be a series of shortcomings for the Trump administration. It appears that Trump has walked back demands for full denuclearization (which some believe North Korea is still expanding.)

Trump’s accepting Kims denial of Warmbier’s death is not going to play well with those who had previously expressed anger at the regime for the role they played in his death.

Watch above via CSPAN.

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