Trump to Reporter: I’ve Been Soft on Kim ‘Because I Don’t Want to See a Nuclear Weapon Destroy You and Your Family’

President Donald Trump now has a concrete reason why he’s been, shall we say, lenient on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un‘s human rights record.

“Because I don’t want to see a nuclear weapon destroy you and your family,” he told CBS Correspondent Weijia Jiang Friday morning in response to her question about why he hasn’t roundly condemned the dictator.

“I want to have a good relationship with North Korea,” he said. “I want to have a good relationship with many other countries. What I’ve done, if you remember, if you’re fair, which most of you aren’t, but if you are fair, but when I came in, people thought we were probably going to war with North Korea.”

Jiang looked to follow up on this point, but Trump put out a hand to stop her, said, “Quiet, quiet,” as if shushing a child, and continued.

“If we did, millions of people would have been killed,” he said. “Seoul has 28 million people 30 miles off the border. You would have had 30, 40, 50 million people killed.”

“I did a great job this weekend,” he insisted.

He later added: “We’re well on our way to getting denuclearization, and the agreement says there will be total denuclearization. Nobody wants to report that. So the only thing I did was I met. I got along with him great. We have a great chemistry together. That’s a good thing.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]

UPDATE 10:14 AM: This article has been updated to include the name of the reporter speaking to President Trump.

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