Speaking in Singapore on Monday, President Donald Trump said he believed Tuesday’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “could work out very nicely.”
“We’ve got a very interesting meeting in particular tomorrow, I think things could work out very nicely,” he said during a bilateral meeting with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who he thanked for the country’s hosting of the event.
The wealthy island-nation is spending around $20 million Singapore dollars — mostly on security and logistics — to host Tuesday’s historic summit, Lee confirmed this weekend.
Trump added that the milestone meeting “was a choice that we made very consciously.”
The meeting is considered a diplomatic breakthrough given the hostility that’s long existed between Pyongyang and Washington. And while concrete results aren’t widely expected, a realistic goal is for both parties to agree to initial confidence-building measures that will narrow the massive trust deficit that currently exists between them, according to geopolitical analysts.
The U.S. leader, who arrived in the Southeast Asian city-state on Sunday, is expected to return to his hotel — the Shangri-La, located in the shopping district of Orchard — later in the day and participate in a meet and greet with the U.S. embassy in the city-state.
