Pompeo Book Claims Kim Jong-Un Led Meeting With Assassination Joke

In this image released by the White House, then-CIA director Mike Pompeo shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang, North Korea, during a 2018 weekend trip.InternationalIndiaAfricaPompeo’s book reveals a stunningly snarky moment the first time he met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.A new book by Mike Pompeo, who served as both US secretary of state and CIA director under former President Donald Trump, has recalled his life in politics.One vignette of “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” which hit the shelves earlier this month, retells a secret April 2018 meeting with Kim Jong-un, president of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In it,, Pompeo claimed: “This small, sweating, evil man tried to break the ice with all the charm you would expect from a mass murderer.”“‘Mr. Director,’ he opened, ‘I didn’t think you’d show up. I know you’ve been trying to kill me.'”“My team and I had prepared for this moment, but ‘a joke about assassination’ was not on the list of ‘things he may say when he greets you.’ But I was, after all, director of the CIA, so maybe his bon mot made sense,” Pompeo added.“I decided to lean in with a little humor of my own: ‘Mr. Chairman, I’m still trying kill you.’ In the picture taken seconds after that exchange, Kim is still smiling. He seemed confident that I was kidding,” Pompeo then wrote.The exchange came after months of ultra-high tensions between the US and DPRK, during which the small socialist state test-fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and Trump threatened the DPRK with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”US and South Korean forces had long practiced a “decapitation strike” to kill the DPRK leadership, including everything from special forces to nuclear airstrikes, although Washington has denied drawing up such plans.However, there was some rapprochement between those events and the summit, during which time Pyongyang announced a unilateral moratorium on such missile tests and inaugurated the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics with South Korea under a united Korean flag.

Pompeo’s bid to finish the job of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula ultimately failed when after months of peace talks, Trump refused to remove sanctions against the DPRK without verifiable proof the country had destroyed its nuclear weapons program and weapons.

Following the release of his book, Pompeo was dragged across social media after a blurb about the book by none other than Pompeo himself did the rounds. One tweet that went viral mused that it was “really embarrassing” Pompeo “couldn’t find ANYONE else to praise his book.”