https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/05/17/trump_they_never_told_qaddafi_he_would_get_protection.html
Excerpt:
At an Oval Office meeting with the NATO Secretary General, President Trump spoke directly to Kim Jong Un following reports that the North Korean dictator was spooked by national security adviser John Bolton's comment that North Korea would follow a 'Libya 2004' style denuclearization.
Trump said reports that talks had broken down with North Korea were "fake news" and revealed that "our people are literally dealing with them right now" planning for the meeting, despite Bolton's comment.
"Well, the Libyan model isn't a model that we have at all when we're thinking of North Korea," the president said. "In Libya, we decimated that country. That country was decimated. There was no deal to keep Qaddafi. The Libyan model that was mentioned was a much different deal."
The president offered Kim a much safer scenario: "This would be with Kim Jong-un something where he'd be there. He'd be in his country. He'd be running his country. His country would be very rich. His people are tremendously industrious. If you look at South Korea -- this would be, really, a South Korean model in terms of their industry, in terms of what they do. They're hardworking incredible people."
"But the Libyan model was a much different model," he repeated. "We decimated that country. We never said to Qaddafi, oh, we're going to give you protection, we're going to give you military strength, we're going to give you all of these things; we went in and decimated him. And we did the same thing with Iraq."
"Now, whether or not we should have, I could tell you, I was against it from the beginning," he added.
"I can only say our people are literally dealing with them right now in terms of making arrangements for the meeting. So that's a lot different from what you read, but oftentimes what you read if it's not fake news, it's true. So we'll see what happens," the president also said before repeating his statement to Kim a third time:
"I think when John Bolton made that statement, he was talking about if we're going to be having a problem, because we cannot let that country have nukes. We just can't do it. So that's the way it's meant. It's really just the opposite," Trump said.