President Trump spent Saturday night delivering a mostly joke-filled speech at the Gridiron Club Dinner (where no cameras are allowed), but he reportedly adopted a serious tone with the subject of North Korea surfaced. His remarks follow South Korea declaring that North Korea was “willing” to talk to the U.S., and Trump claimed that Pyongyang did in fact make an overture. Whether or not it’s true, we may never know, but here’s what Trump said, via CNN:
“They called up a couple of days ago and said, ‘We would like to talk.’ And I said, ‘So would we, but you have to de-nuke. You have to de-nuke.’ So let’s see what happens. Let’s see what happens. Maybe positive things are happening. I hope that’s true … I say that in all seriousness … And we’re soon going to know. We will be meeting, and we will see if anything positive happens. It’s been a long time. It’s a problem that should have been fixed a long time ago, not now.”
Fox News, in their report, also indicates that Trump’s tone was a serious one on this subject only. He also expressed a willingness to meet face-to-face with Kim Jong-un, which sounds like a disaster in the making. Sure, Trump could adopt a friendly diplomatic face, but the constant stream of publicly issued insults leads one to believe that any encounter between “Rocket Man” and “Dotard” would be a meeting that might actually accelerate conflict rather than extinguish it.
Elsewhere within the Gridiron Dinner speech, Trump addressed the revolving staff door within the White House. The latest high profile exit, Hope Hicks, was Trump’s fourth comms director in just over a year. Trump made light of this by joking that Melania might be next:
“So many people have been leaving the White House. It’s actually been really exciting and invigorating ’cause you want new thoughts. So I like turnover. I like chaos. It is really good. Now, the question everybody keeps asking: Who’s going to be the next to leave, Steve Miller or Melania?”
Naturally, folks are making a lot out of this joke amid speculation that Melania wants out of the First Lady gig and possibly her marriage. Yet it’s possible that Trump is oblivious to all this chatter, especially since he was recently too busy worrying about the wind hitting his hairpiece to walk beside his wife while boarding Air Force One. Perhaps Melania will leave him over the Stormy Daniels saga, but Trump’s quips on the subject shall lead nowhere.