While reporters stood in a Singapore auditorium waiting to hear the results of the historic Trump-Kim summit, two giant TV screens on both sides of the podium turned on, bombarding the crowd with “a montage portraying North Korea as some sort of paradise,” The Washington Post reports.
Golden sunrises. Gleaming skylines and high-speed trains. Children skipping through Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang, North Korean flags waving between images of Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Lincoln Memorial.
In a split-screen shot, Kim Jong Un waved to an adoring crowd while President Trump stood beside him with his thumb in the air. The pair appeared over and over again, like running mates in a campaign video.
Journalists who couldn’t understand the Korean narration of the video wondered if they were watching a propaganda film from Kim Jong Un. “What country are we in?” one journalist reportedly asked.
But when Trump appeared, he explained that the video was produced by the White House as a shout-out to Kim.
“I hope you liked it,” Trump told the reporters, according to WaPo. “I thought it was good. I thought it was interesting enough to show. … And I think he loved it.”
The video was mostly composed of stock footage of different world monuments, playful children, various cityscapes, with images of Trump and Kim spliced in. At one point, the narrator asks, “What if a people that share a common and rich heritage can find a common future? Their story is well known but what will be their sequel?”
“Featuring President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un in a meeting to remake history,” the narrator concluded. “It is going to become a reality?”
At one point, a reporter asked Trump of he’s concerned the video could be used by Kim for propaganda purposes.
“No, I’m not concerned at all,” Trump replied. “We can use that video for other countries.”
Watch the video below via Slate.com:
Featured image via screen grab
