White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed the media simply wants to rag on President Donald Trump’s success in arranging talks with North Korea ahead of his summit with dictator Kim Jong Un.
“I think that the only one setting high expectations is probably the media because they’re looking for reasons to attack this president,” Sanders told Fox News on Friday. “They hate the idea that he’s done so well on something his predecessors couldn’t do anything on.”
Trump is set to talk with Kim next week in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, marking the second time the two will be face-to-face following their first meeting last June.
Though Sanders claimed “we’re finally making progress” in relations with North Korea, its nuclear and missiles programs are still intact, according to a report from United Nations experts discussed earlier this month by The Associated Press.
Furthermore, the report concluded “that the DPRK is using civilian facilities, including airports, for ballistic missile assembly and testing with the goal of effectively preventing ‘decapitation’ strikes,” and that there is “evidence of a consistent trend on the part of the DPRK to disperse the assembly, storage and testing locations.”
Still, Sanders contended the administration is “not naive” and that U.S.-North Korea talks have been promising.
“The president is in no hurry particularly as long as things continue to move forward in a positive manner and as long as the conversations continue to go well,” she said. “Again, we’ll see what happens.”