President Donald Trump gave Americans a preview of this week's nuclear summit with North Korea – nearly 19 years ago.

As he considered a 2000 third-party run for the White House, the real estate tycoon told NBC News that he would 'negotiate like crazy' with what was then a future nuclear state, but ultimately wouldn't write off the possibility of military strikes.

'Now, if that negotiation doesn't work,' Trump said in the October 1999 interview, 'you'd better solve the problem now than solve it later.'

The future commander-in-chief referred to North Korea as 'sort of wacko' and 'not a bunch of dummies, and they are going out and they are developing nuclear weapons.'

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President Donald Trump said in 1999 (pictured) that if he were America's commander-in-chief he would 'negotiate like crazy' with North Korea before considering a military strike on their nuclear weapons infrastructure

Trump was talking at the time about the 'wacko' regime of despot Kim Jong-il, whose son is now the hermit kingdom's powerful tyrant

Trump and the dictator Kim Jong-un met Tuesday in Singapore to negotiate what the White House has predicted will be a complete withdrawal of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program

Flashback: Trump says he would 'negotiate like crazy' with North Korea on Meet the Press in 1999 pic.twitter.com/oSXyC70AMG — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 9, 2017

His tough talk, which foreshadowed this year's threats about raining 'fire and fury' on Pyongyang, came with Tim Russert, the 'Meet the Press' host who died 10 years ago.

Russert cautioned Trump that prominent U.S. military leaders have warned about the nuclear fallout from a first strike – a potential disaster that would affect most of East Asia.

'I'm not talking about us using nuclear weapons,' he answered. 'I'm saying that they have areas where they're developing missiles' that could be attacked with conventional weapons.

President Trump boasted Wednesday that '[t]here is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea' following a day of negotiations

Trump's foreshadowing came in an October 1999 interview with Tim Russert on 'Meet the Press' as he was considing a White House run in the 2000 elections

'Do you want to do it in five years when they have nuclear warheads all over the place, every one of them pointed to New York City, to Washington, and every one of us?' Trump asked.

'Is that when you want to do it? Or do you want to do something now?'

Still, the bare-knuckled Manhattan dealmaker said his first preference would be the kind of sit-down meeting that he ended up attending two days ago in Singapore.

'If they think you're serious – I deal with lots of people – if they think you're serious, they'll negotiate, and it'll never come to that,' he boasted.

Trump compared Kim Jong-il, the father of the hermit nation's current dictator Kim Jong-un, to an armed mugger whose attack might be thwarted if his victim could somehow negotiate with him ahead of time.

'If a man walks up to you on a street in Washington – because this doesn't happen, of course, in New York – but if a man walks up and puts a gun to your head and says "Give me your money," wouldn't you rather know where he's coming from before he had the gun in his hand?' he asked.