An excerpt of Donald Trump's remarks in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday. Trump: I'll meet with Kim Jong Un in the U.S.

Donald Trump as president would welcome North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the United States — but not for an official state dinner, he said Wednesday.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee mocked Hillary Clinton for her criticism of Trump’s willingness to speak with Kim, calling the former secretary of state a “rank amateur.”


“She’s been doing it forever and she still doesn’t get it,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Atlanta on Wednesday. “What the hell is wrong with speaking? And you know what? It’s called opening a dialogue. It’s opening a dialogue.”

Trump, however, speculated that the meeting probably wouldn’t happen.

“But there’s nothing — I wouldn’t go there,” he said. “That I can tell you. If he came here, I’d accept him, but I wouldn’t give him a state dinner like we do for China and all these other people that rip us off when we give them these big state dinners. We give them state dinners like you’ve never seen.”

The U.S. shouldn’t have such costly state dinners at all, Trump argued, instead suggesting, “We should be eating a hamburger on a conference table, and we should make better deals with China and others and forget the state dinners.”

Trump said he would “absolutely” speak to Kim, recalling the hubbub when he told Reuters last month that he would speak with the North Korean dictator if he became president.

“Who the hell cares? I’ll speak to anybody. Who knows?” Trump said. “There’s a 10 percent or a 20 percent chance that I can talk him out of those damn nukes because who the hell wants him to have nukes? And there’s a chance — I’m only gonna make a good deal for us.”