Trump now says North Korea is still an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’

After his June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, President Trump claimed in a tweet that the rogue regime was “no longer a nuclear threat.”

However, in a letter to Congress on Friday, Trump said North Korea continues to pose an “extraordinary threat.”

“The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the Government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump stated while extending a national emergency relating to North Korea that has been in place for years.

According to Newsweek, the measure was “first declared by former President George W. Bush’s signing of an executive order on June 26, 2008,” then “expanded four times under former President Barack Obama and once before in September by Trump.”

The national emergency will continue for at least one year beyond June 26, 2018.

Trump had faced criticism for downplaying the North Korea threat in the days following his summit with Kim.

“Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Trump tweeted on June 13.

“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem,” Trump wrote in another tweet. “No longer – sleep well tonight!”

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