Former White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in her memoir ‘Speaking for Myself’, that Donald Trump told her to “go to North Korea and take one for the team”, after Kim Jong-un winked at a Singapore summit in June 2018.
Sanders mentioned that during a session of talks Kim “reluctantly” accepted a Tic Tac mint from Trump, who dramatically blew in the air to reassure the North Korean supremo that it was not poison.
Sanders added that at one point she noticed Kim staring at her. “We made direct eye contact and Kim nodded and appeared to wink at me. I was stunned. I quickly looked down and continued taking notes.”
“… All I could think was, ‘What just happened? Surely Kim Jong-un did not just mark me!?” she added.
When she was in the presidential limousine with Trump and the then chief of staff John Kelly, she told them about the incident after which Trump joked to Sanders “Kim Jong-un hit on you! He did! He fucking hit on you!”
Sanders said: “Sir, please stop.”
She then asserted that Trump told her, “Well, Sarah, that settles it. You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team! Your husband and kids will miss you, but you’ll be a hero to your country!”
“Trump and Kelly howled with laughter as the car drove on,” she added.
This is not the first time Trump wanted to play “cupid.”
According to a report by Politico, a US-based media company devoted to covering politics and policy, when Donald Trump discovered that Narendra Modi would be flying solo on his then upcoming June 2017 state visit to the US, he joked that he could play matchmaker for the Indian prime minister.
"Staffers explained that Modi has long been estranged from his wife," Politico reported before revealing Trump's plans to play Cupid: "'Ah, I think I can set him up with somebody,' Trump joked [in response]."
