Trump explains why he takes Kim’s word for it that he had no idea anyone was being harsh to Otto Warmbier.

Chris Cillizza has doubts:

Trump said this of Warmbier and North Korea: “He tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.” Trump added that Kim “felt badly about it. He felt very badly.”

Trump is, apparently, taking the word of a brutal dictator who had his half-brother murdered with nerve gas at an airport and who continues to live a posh lifestyle while his country suffers the effects of staggering economic sanctions? The guy who North Korean media says began driving a car at age 3, helped cure Ebola and can control the weather? We’re going to believe THAT guy???

On its face, Kim’s claim that he was unaware of Warmbier’s arrest and treatment is beyond laughable. Kim rules North Korea with an iron fist. He wouldn’t know that an American college student had been arrested in his country? He would miss how Warmbier’s arrest and incarceration became a massive national and international story? And at no time in the 18 months Warmbier was held would anyone in Kim’s government ever see fit to mention that they were holding an American prisoner?