Trump says North Korea 'no longer' a nuclear threat as he returns to Washington
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump declared Wednesday that there is "no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea" as he returned to Washington, offering a rosy assessment of a summit with the leader of a nation that still possesses nuclear weapons.
"Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea," the president said on Twitter.
In a separate tweet, he said that North Korea is no longer the United States' most dangerous problem, as President Barack Obama had characterized it upon leaving office.
Trump's tweets followed a high-profile summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that produced a promise to "denuclearize" the Korean Peninsula but was scant on details.
His tweets came shortly after Air Force One landed at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington.
Trump's assessment comes as lawmakers, analysts and allies have hailed the effort but questioned the substance of what was achieved.
A brief document signed by Trump and Kim provided virtually no detail beyond the stated commitment to "denuclearize," a promise that Pyongyang has made and ignored many times in the past.
Even as they offered measured praise for Trump's diplomatic efforts, congressional Republicans have emphasized the difficult road that remains and pressed for more details of what exactly the president agreed to with Kim.
Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said Tuesday that he wants Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to brief senators on the substance of what the two nations discussed, including whether U.S. troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula would remain.
"I have no idea" whether Trump secured anything of substance, said Corker, the retiring chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "At this juncture, I don't think we know enough to challenge or celebrate."
In his tweets, Trump called his meeting with Kim "an interesting and very positive experience."
He also said that before he took office last year, "people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea."
"President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer - sleep well tonight!" the president wrote.