President Donald Trump’s tweet about Kim Jong Un came on the heels of the North Korean leader’s visit to China earlier this week. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Trump predicts Kim 'will do what is right' but keeps sanctions in place ahead of meeting

President Donald Trump on Wednesday predicted that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “will do what is right for his people and for humanity,” relaying the message that Kim is apparently looking forward to his planned meeting with Trump in the coming weeks.

“For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility. Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning.


The president’s tweet about Kim came on the heels of the North Korean leader’s visit to China earlier this week, Kim’s first trip outside his own country since he took the reins of power from his late father in 2011. Trump wrote online that Chinese President Xi Jinping had given him a readout of Kim’s visit to Beijing.

“Received message last night from XI JINPING of China that his meeting with KIM JONG UN went very well and that KIM looks forward to his meeting with me,” Trump wrote. “In the meantime, and unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!”

That Trump and Kim are planning to meet came as a surprise when it was announced earlier this month at the White House by a visiting South Korean delegation. The announced meeting is to take place by May, although the White House has yet to announce any further details and North Korea has been uncharacteristically quiet about the meeting.

Such a meeting would be a dramatic departure not only from decades of past precedent dictating that U.S. presidents not meet with North Korea’s ruling Kim family, but also from the rhetoric between Trump and Kim that has dominated the relationship through the U.S. president’s first 14 months in office.

Since Trump’s inauguration, North Korea has ramped up its missile testing program and also tested its most powerful nuclear device to date, prompting the U.S. president to launch what his administration has labeled a “maximum pressure campaign” to dissuade the Kim regime from its nuclear ambitions. Trump has pointedly refused to remove the threat of military action from the table and threatened last summer that North Korea “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it did not stop its threatening behavior.