CNN’s Jake Tapper calls out Pompeo over Trump declaring North Korea no longer a nuclear threat

CNN’s Jake Tapper called out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday for contradicting President Trump on North Korea.

“Do you think North Korea remains a nuclear threat?” Tapper asked Pompeo on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Yes,” Pompeo said.

{mosads}”But the president said he doesn’t,” Tapper said.

“That’s not what he said,” Pompeo responded.

Tapper pointed to a tweet from Trump last June that said “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”

“Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump tweeted after his first meeting with Kim Jong Un last year. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

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. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018

“What he said was that the efforts that had been made in Singapore, this commitment that Chairman Kim made, had substantially taken down the risk to the American people,” Pompeo told CNN on Sunday.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he believes North Korea remains a nuclear threat and disputes the fact that President Trump thinks otherwise. “What he said was … the efforts that had been made in Singapore … have substantially taken down the risk to the American people” pic.twitter.com/keXCFb4xtd

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 24, 2019

Pompeo previously sought to clarify the tweet last June.

“I’m confident what he intended there was, ‘we did reduce the threat,’ ” Pompeo told CNN at the time. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”

Trump plans to meet with the North Korean leader again this week in Vietnam. Pompeo told Fox News in a separate interview on Sunday that there may be another meeting because “we may not get everything done this week.”

“He [Kim Jong Un] promised he’d denuclearize. We hope he’ll make a big step towards that in the week ahead,” Pompeo told CNN in the same interview on Sunday.