The family of Otto Warmbier rebuked President Donald Trump on Friday for siding with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who denied knowledge of their son’s maltreatment during his imprisonment.
“We have been respectful during this summit process. 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. Thank you,” Fred and Cindy Warmbier, Otto’s parents, said in a statement provided to CNN.
After a second summit with Kim in Vietnam, President Trump said Thursday he does not hold the North Korean dictator responsible for Warmbier’s death.
“He tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word,” Trump said during a news conference.
Otto Warmbier was a University of Virginia student when he was detained in January 2016 during a brief sightseeing tour of the reclusive state. He was held captive by the North Korean regime for over a year, before being released back to the US in June 2017. Then 22 years old, Warmbier returned home to Ohio in a vegetative state — blind, deaf, and having sustained severe brain damage from his time in detention. He died on June 19, 2017, days after the Trump administration had secured his return.
Parents of Otto Warmbier, Fred and Cindy Warmbier (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Warmbier family was recently awarded more than $500 million in a wrongful death suit against the North Korean government.
Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Friday that Trump “agrees with the Warmbier family and holds North Korea responsible for Otto Warmbier’s death.”
“Of course, (Trump) holds North Korea responsible. He has deep affection and shares the grief with the Warmbier family,” Conway said in an interview on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” adding later, “What the President is saying is that there’s no indication Chairman Kim knew what happened to Otto Warmbier when it happened.”
During his Thursday news conference in Vietnam, Trump told reporters he believed Kim’s denial in part because it would not be in Kim’s interest for Warmbier to wind up in a coma.
“I don’t think that the top leadership knew about it,” Trump said. “I don’t believe that he (Kim) would have allowed that to happen.”
Some Republican lawmakers and even a former senior member of Trump’s national security team pushed back against the President’s comments.
“Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime,” Nikki Haley, Trump’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted. “Our hearts are with the Warmbier family for their strength and courage. We will never forget Otto.”
Trump’s whitewash ignored the tight control that Kim maintains over his country’s internal affairs as its supreme leader, particularly when it comes to sensitive matters such as the imprisonment of an American citizen.
Kim oversees one of the world’s most repressive regimes, one that human rights groups say includes concentration camps, starvation and carries out medical experimentation on human subjects. The UN estimates that North Korea has 80,000 to 120,000 people in its gulags.
