Trump defends relationship with nuclear powers, including North's Kim
At a midterm campaign rally in Ohio, U.S. President Donald Trump said that it was good to get along with countries that have "112 nuclear missiles" without explaining what the figure represented.
U.S. President Donald Trump, left, meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in the truce village of Panmunjom on June 30, 2019.REUTERS/YONHAP
U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday defended his ties with rival nuclear powers, explaining that it is “nice to get along with leaders of massive nuclear nations” as he continues to signal interest in resuming talks with North Korea.
Speaking at a midterm campaign rally in Ohio, Trump said, “I get along great with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-un. Isn’t it nice to get along with the leaders of [...] massive nuclear nations?” He made the remarks while discussing his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump also said that it was good to get along with countries that have “112 nuclear missiles” without explaining what the figure represented. The remark came shortly after he mentioned Kim, suggesting that he may have been referring to North Korea. In August, however, Trump said that the North possessed 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons — a figure referring to its nuclear arsenal rather than the number of nuclear-capable missiles. As a result, it remains unclear what Trump’s latest figure of 112 represents or how it relates to the 57 nuclear weapons that he previously cited.
Estimates of the North’s arsenal vary. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri)estimated in a report this year that North Korea has at least 90 warheads, counting both assembled warheads and those that it is capable of producing. Some research institutes put the number at more than 100. Responding to Trump’s remark in August, former South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said, “We estimate 80 to 120.”
Sipri also estimated that Israel has about 90 nuclear warheads, Pakistan about 170 and India about 190. Taken at face value, Trump’s figure of 112 would exceed Israel’s estimated stockpile and amount to about two-thirds of Pakistan’s.
The U.S. president has recently touted his rapport with Kim. During a speech at a Peterbilt truck plant in Denton, Texas, on Thursday, he spotted former NBA star Dennis Rodman in the audience and greeted him. Rodman is known to call Kim a friend and has even visited North Korea several times since 2013.
On Tuesday, when reporters asked Trump why North Korea can have nuclear weapons when Iran can’t, he replied, “Because you had a different president. And they could have stopped him.”
“As long as I’m around, he’s going to be fine,” he added, referring to Kim. “You know why? Because he respects me and he likes me. I’m about the only person in the entire world that he likes, and I like him.”
Trump returned to the comparison at Saturday’s rally, saying that Iran will never have nuclear missiles.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on Oct. 2 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.AFP/YONHAP
Trump also used the rally to praise U.S. tariffs, claiming that China, Japan, Korea and Canada used tariffs against the United States for years.
He said that companies used to build factories abroad, taking jobs from Americans, and ship their goods to the United States at no cost, but that his administration now gives them about a year and a half to build plants in the United States and hits those that don’t with tariffs of 150 to 300 percent. As a result, companies are all building plants in the United States now, he claimed, and all are doing very well.
Ohio is the first state that Trump has visited since he began campaigning for the midterms on Thursday. It has long leaned Republican but currently faces a tight Senate race. Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown leads Republican Sen. Jon Husted 49 percent to 46 percent, within the margin of error, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College from Sept. 22 to Thursday and released on Saturday.
Husted joined Trump at the rally, during which the president repeated that attracting AI data centers to the region could make it wealthy. He promised to sign Husted’s electricity rate protection bill, which would make data centers bear the costs, if Husted is elected.
Trump, who has dismissed unfavorable polls as fake news, also urged supporters to turn out and vote. He cast Democratic candidates as communists; said that Republicans were close to a decisive victory over communists, socialists and radical extremists; and vowed that the United States would never become a communist country.
Update, Oct. 4, 2026: Added U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks about North Korea’s arsenal and from the Ohio rally.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
