Pompeo Joked with Kim Jong Un About Killing Him

Former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spotlights his clandestine 2018 trip to North Korea as he met for the first time with the totalitarian regime’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, in the first chapter of his new memoir, Fox News reports.

Writes Pompeo: “This small, sweating, evil man tried to break the ice with all the charm you would expect from a mass murderer. ‘Mr. Director,’ he opened, ‘I didn’t think you’d show up. I know you’ve been trying to kill me.’ My team and I had prepared for this moment, but ‘a joke about assassination’ was not on the list of ‘things he may say when he greets you.’ But I was, after all, director of the CIA, so maybe his bon mot made sense.”

“I decided to lean in with a little humor of my own: ‘Mr. Chairman, I’m still trying kill you.’ In the picture taken seconds after that exchange, Kim is still smiling. He seemed confident that I was kidding.”