Trump Jests About Being Dumped by Melania at Gridiron Dinner — But Was President Joking When He Hinted at North Korea Meeting?
President Trump attended the annual Gridiron Club dinner Saturday, where he jested about a range of controversies — including the state of his marriage to First Lady Melania Trump.
"So many people have been leaving the White House. It’s invigorating since you want turnover. I like chaos. It really is good. Who’s going to be the next to leave? Steve Miller, or Melania?" Trump quipped, according to White House pool reports.
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Trump's marriage has been the center of speculation for weeks, after allegations of his affair with a porn star in the mid-1990s emerged.
Amid the jests though, one remark seemed to hint at a possible diplomatic breakthrough with his administration’s key adversary, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea.
“Now we are talking and they, by the way, called up a couple of days ago. They said that‘we would like to talk.’ And I said‘So would we, but you have to de-nuke, you have to de-nuke,’” Trump told attendees at the dinner.
“We will be meeting and we’ll see if anything positive happens,” he added.
It was unclear if Trump was joking or if formal U.S.-North Korea talks were imminent.
“I won’t rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un. I just won’t,” he said, referring to North Korea’s leader.
“As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned, that’s his problem, not mine,” Trump said.
If a meeting were to come together, it would be the first between the Trump administration and Pyongyang, which are in a standoff over North’s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States.
Trump’s remarks came shortly before South Korea’s presidency announced on Sunday that a high-level delegation of South Korean officials will travel to North Korea on Monday to discuss improving relations on the peninsula and possible talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
After the two-day visit to North Korea, the special envoys will travel to the United States to brief officials on their discussions in Pyongyang, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said.
Signs of a North-South thaw have prompted speculation that it could lead to direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang after months of tension and exchanges of insults between Trump and Kim, that have fuelled fears of war.
North Korea has refrained from carrying out any weapons tests since late November, when it tested its largest intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Gridiron Club’s annual dinner has been attended by most U.S. presidents as well as opposition leaders. At the event club members don wigs and costumes to perform satirical skits skewering the president and Washington political class, a tradition dating back to 1885.
Presidents typically deliver a humorous speech at the event and do not disclose new policy initiatives. Trump rattled off a series of jokes that got plenty of laughs, skewering members of his own Cabinet like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who were all present in the Washington hotel ballroom.