Trump faces fury after saying he believes Kim Jong Un on Otto Warmbier's death
After U.S. college student Otto Warmbier was released from a North Korea prison in 2017, unresponsive and not expected to survive, his father, Fred, spoke of a comforting phone call from President Donald Trump: “It was gracious, it was nice, and it felt good.”
During Trump’s State of the Union address in 2018, Fred Warmbier and his wife, Cindy, stood and wept while Trump spoke of the “menace” of North Korea and gave tribute to their son, who died days after his release.
On Friday, the Warmbiers emerged into the public eye again, this time with a blistering statement directed at the president. They said they could no longer be silent after the summit this week with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, and after hearing Trump say that he believed Kim’s claim that he did not know what had happened to Warmbier while he was in custody.
“We have been respectful during this summit process,” the Warmbiers said in a statement. “Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”
The outrage went far beyond the Warmbiers, as U.S. political leaders, including members of Trump’s own party, joined the family in condemning Kim for Warmbier’s death.
“Americans know, the world knows, Kim Jong Un knows, and most importantly, the Warmbier family knows that Otto suffered a cruel death inflicted by a brutal regime serving Kim Jong Un,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, wrote on Twitter.
For the Warmbiers, who had found an ally in Trump as the president helped secure the release of their son, it was a striking turnabout.
In late 2015, Otto Warmbier was an adventure-seeking University of Virginia student on a five-day tour of North Korea. As he tried to leave the country, he was detained at the Pyongyang airport, accused of stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. He was returned to the United States in June 2017 with a catastrophic brain injury, and he died at age 22.
Trump said in 2017 that Warmbier was “tortured beyond belief by North Korea.”
But in the aftermath of the summit in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, this week between Trump and Kim, Trump said that the two leaders discussed Warmbier and that Trump believed Kim was ignorant of what was happening to Warmbier while he was imprisoned.
“I don’t believe that he would have allowed that to happen; it just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen,” Trump said afterward. “Those prisons are rough — they’re rough places — and bad things happened. But I really don’t believe that he — I don’t believe that he knew about it.”
“He tells me that he didn’t know about it,” Trump also said, “and I will take him at his word.”
Just as the Warmbier family’s plight aroused sympathy around the world after Warmbier’s 17-month imprisonment, his parent’s statement Friday was echoed by words of support from a chorus of elected officials in Ohio.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in an email: “North Korea murdered Otto Warmbier and the president of the United States has a responsibility to make sure they face the consequences. Anything short of that is unacceptable.”
In the Warmbiers’ hometown — Wyoming, Ohio, an affluent enclave of 8,500 people that borders Cincinnati — their neighbors, friends and acquaintances said they were aghast that Trump appeared to be taking the side of Kim, a dictator and authoritarian known for his willingness to torture and execute political enemies.
“Everybody both loves that family and sympathizes completely with the circumstances they’ve had to deal with,” Jenni McCauley, a Wyoming councilwoman.
Otto Warmbier was an outstanding young man, she said, eager to travel and curious to explore the world.
“It’s such a sad thing that Trump said anything in regard to it,” McCauley said. “We wish he had not said anything.” Founded in 1805, Wyoming boasts century-old, well-kept homes and a tidy downtown with mom-and-pop businesses and a village green park. The area, which is part of Hamilton County, leans Democratic, residents said. Trees and streetlamps that had been wrapped in blue-and-white ribbons in support of Otto Warmbier at the time of his release stood bare Friday.
When school let out, students spilled out from a campus on foot and filled local coffee shops and bakeries.
Patty Pfahler, 59, the owner of a home furnishing store in Wyoming, said that she felt conflicted by the president’s remarks. They “felt sour and reopened old wounds,” Pfahler said, but she also suggested they might be an effort at international diplomacy.
At a coffee shop in town, one employee, Kate Nicholson, 42, said that hearing Trump say what he did about Kim “made my stomach hurt.”
Darren Wilson, 47, a resident of Wyoming, questioned whether Kim could really have been ignorant of Warmbier’s condition while he was imprisoned.
“I find it hard to believe that someone who runs a country where the people are so oppressed would not know what is going on with someone like Otto,” Wilson said. “I don’t personally believe it.”
Sherry Sheffield, Wyoming’s unofficial historian, said that residents of the town have tried to give the family privacy to grieve since their son died. “I have heard other people say they’re doing OK,” she said. Of the family’s decision to speak out, Sheffield said, “they’re really in this to make sure that people understand what happened.”
The Warmbiers filed a federal lawsuit last year in the United States against the autocratic government, and they were awarded over $501 million in damages, although it is unlikely they will receive the full amount from North Korea.
No one answered the door at the Warmbiers’ home on Friday afternoon.
Trump said on Twitter on Friday that his remarks had been “misinterpreted.”
“Of course I hold North Korea responsible for Otto’s mistreatment and death,” he said, adding: “I love Otto and think of him often!”
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Kevin Williams reported from Wyoming, Ohio, and Julie Bosman from Chicago. Mitch Smith contributed reporting from Chicago and Sonia Chopra from Wyoming.
