Jun 12, 2018 - World
Trump tells Hannity: "I felt foolish" with "fire and fury" rhetoric

- Mike Allen, author ofAxios AM

Courtesy of Fox News
A first look at President Trump's interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity immediately after his Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (airing in full at 9 p.m. ET):
"[O]ther administrations, I don’t want to get specific on that, but you know they had a policy of silence. If [North Korea] said something very bad and very threatening and horrible, just don’t answer. That’s not the answer. That’s not what you have to do. So I think the rhetoric — I hated to do it, sometimes I felt foolish doing it — but we had no choice."— President Trump to Fox News' Sean Hannity
The conversation leading up to that quote:
- Hannity: "In the room alone and then the subsequent talks with your team and their team, how honest, how brutal, what was said?"
- Trump: "So we got along very well. We got along from the beginning."
- Hannity: "A lot of people critics quickly saying when you said 'Little Rocket Man' or 'fire and fury,' or when he said, 'Oh, I’ve got a red button on my desk,' and you said, 'Well, mine’s bigger and it works better than yours,' how did it evolve from that to this?"
- Trump: "I think without the rhetoric we wouldn’t have been here. I really believe that. You know, we did sanctions and all the things you would do. But I think without the rhetoric..."
Trump also was scheduled to talk in Singapore with Greta Van Susteren for Voice of America.