Warmbier family rebukes Trump for defense of Kim

President Donald Trump sparred publicly Friday with the parents of Otto Warm-bier after they rebuked him for holding North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un blameless in their son’s death following 17 months in captivity, as growing tensions between them burst into an open feud.

Hours after Fred and Cindy Warmbier issued an emotional statement that directly accused Kim and his “evil regime” of killing their son in 2017, Trump asserted in a pair of tweets that his views had been “misinterpreted” when he defended Kim at a news conference a day earlier in Hanoi.

Trump had said, in response to a question from a Washington Post reporter, that Kim felt “very badly” about Warmbier’s death and that he took the authoritarian leader “at his word” that he was unaware of the college student’s abusive treatment.

“Of course I hold North Korea responsible for Otto’s mistreatment and death,” Trump wrote on Twitter, without mentioning Kim. The president blamed the Obama administration for not doing more to secure Warmbier’s release and emphasized that Warmbier “will not have died in vain” as he continues to negotiate with Pyongyang.

Trump’s effort at political damage control came hours after the Warmbiers said they felt compelled to speak out after maintaining a relatively low profile out of respect for the president’s sensitive negotiations with Kim, including summits in Singapore last June and in Hanoi this week.

The president had sought to forge a bond with the family as part of an international pressure campaign on the Kim regime in 2017 and early 2018 that helped lead to the summits, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Trump called the family several times during that period, and Vice President Mike Pence also maintained contact with the Warmbiers. The parents were among the guests of first lady Melania Trump at the 2018 State of the Union address.

But the Warmbiers have been growing increasingly exasperated with Trump’s embrace of Kim since their first meeting in Singapore, according to a person with close ties to the family. Trump boasted at a campaign rally last fall that he and Kim “fell in love” after exchanging personal letters. And this week, Trump referred to Kim as “my friend” in a tweet and praised him as a “real leader” in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

In December, the Warm-bier family won a $500 million federal court judgment against North Korea for the torture and extrajudicial killing of their son.

“Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto,” the Warmbiers said in their statement Friday. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuse or lavish praise can change that.”

The sharp public break between the family and Trump now leaves the White House struggling to deal with growing political backlash over the president’s lack of attention on North Korea’s human rights abuses at a time when nuclear disarmament negotiations have broken down.

Democrats and some Republicans have criticized Trump over his remarks about Kim and called on the president to take a tougher stand against the North Korean dictator.

White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway attempted to tamp down criticism during a Friday interview on Fox News, insisting that “Trump agrees with the Warmbier family and holds North Korea responsible.” But she continued to draw a distinction between the North Korean regime and Kim.

“The president is talking about Chairman Kim did not know what happened to Otto at the time of when it happened,” she said. Conway added that Trump continues to take Kim “at his word” in the matter. “That is right,” she said.

Foreign policy experts said it was unfathomable that Kim would be kept unaware of the treatment of a high-profile American hostage such as Warmbier, whose case has drawn international attention.

Warmbier, then a21-year-old student at the University of Virginia, was detained in Pyongyang in January 2016 after taking part in an organized tour of North Korea. He was accused of taking a propaganda poster from a wall.

In their legal filing, the Warmbiers stated that North Korean officials forced Otto to make afalse statement in which he confessed to invented accusations that he was operating as a spy connected to the CIA. He was released more than 17 months later in a deep coma, blind, deaf, with a wound on his foot and damage to his teeth, the lawsuit states.