Best-selling author Stephen King has taken a dig at President Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump had tweeted that the secretive state would become a “great economic powerhouse” under the dictator Kim.
“He may surprise some but he won’t surprise me, because I have gotten to know him and fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket – an Economic one!”
With the two leaders scheduled to meet on February 27 and 28 in Hanoi, Vietnam, the author of “The Shining” believes that the North Korean leader already has the measure of Trump.
In a tweet, King referenced the 2,500-year old military treatise that has been the textbook for generals.
“Unlike Donald Trump, who doesn’t read, Kim Jong-un knows The Art of War, by Sun Tzu: Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance,” he wrote in a tweet which was retweeted more than 4,000 times and liked by other 22,000 people as of Saturday.
Among the thread to King’s tweet were comments like: “Kim Jong-un has probably memorized “The Prince” whereas Trump thinks Machiavelli is an exotic pasta dish,” while another wrote: “Plays him like a fiddle.”
Since the summit last July in Singapore between the leaders, Trump has reiterated how his strong relationship with Kim had prevented a war and stated that Pyongyang has stopped testing missiles.
However, intelligence reports suggest the country is building new missile bases and still working at building nuclear weapons.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel told a congressional hearing in January that they did not think North Korea will ever denuclearize.
Last week, a UN Security Council diplomat cited by CNN said that North Korea was moving nuclear and ballistic weapons to hide them from potential U.S. military strikes.
The diplomat said there was “evidence of a consistent trend on the part of the DPRK to disperse its assembly, storage, and testing locations.”
Ahead of the summit, U.S. envoy Stephen Biegun met his counterpart Kim Hyok-chol in Pyongyang and warned there would be “some hard work to do with the DPRK (North Korea) between now and then,” the BBC reported.