Will Trump Bring Up Otto Warmbier Death At North Korea Summit?
Vice President Mike Pence said Saturday that he had spoken with Otto Warmbier’s father earlier in the day and that President Trump was going to the peace summit in Singapore with “with the family of Otto Warmbier on his heart,” CNN reported.
Warmbier, a 22-year-old American student, was detained in North Korea for 17 months and was returned to his family “with severe brain damage and in a nonresponsive state” last June. He died later that month.
President Trump closed his news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday by paying tribute to Warmbier’s family, saying that the student “has not died in vain.” Trump said he wanted to pay his respects to the family before his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.
Neither Trump nor Pence specifically said the president would bring up the topic of Warmbier’s death at the summit, a move that could anger the prickly and reclusive dictator.
NBC News reported that Trump does not plan to mention North Korea’s abysmal human rights record at all.
Trump invited Warmbier’s parents to his State of the Union address, where they received an extended standing ovation from lawmakers of both parties.
Warmbier’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April against North Korea, saying its government tortured and killed their son.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO