Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday he's optimistic about the upcoming talks between President Donald Trump and North Korea chairman Kim Jong Un, and that the United States' goal for North Korea remains "complete denuclearization."
"The good news is they haven't conducted missile tests or nuclear tests in now well over a year so that's better than the place that we found it when the Trump administration came into office," Pompeo told NBC News' "Today."
Pompeo said he has a team on the ground in Vietnam today laying groundwork for next week's summit in Hanoi and he is "hopeful" Kim will keep the promises he made in Singapore last June. He added that there will be no compromises in the goal for denuclearization.
Pompeo also appeared Thursday on Fox Business' "Mornings with Maria," where he told anchor Maria Bartiromo that Trump has not dropped his expectations, despite comments earlier this week from the president that he's in "no rush."
"We came in when missiles were tested, nuclear weapons were tested," said Pompeo. "We haven't had tests of either of those types of systems for over a year now. We've had the return of remains of Americans."
He noted that when he was a young soldier and patrolling the East German border in 1989, nobody anticipated the Berlin Wall would come down.
"I think the work that we've done, the economic sanctions that have been in place, negotiations that President Trump has led, I hope one day we all wake up and we get a moment just like the one that the world had in 1989," said Pompeo.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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