In brief comments following a joint appearance with the president of Ukraine, Donald Trump expressed his outrage at the death of 22-year-old Otto Warmbier, an Ohio college student who was held hostage in North Korea for nearly 18 months before being returned to the United States while in a coma.
"It's a total disgrace what happened to Otto. That should never ever be allowed to happen," Trump said. "And frankly if he were brought home sooner I think the result would have been a lot different."
That “brought home sooner” was the theme of Trump’s statements. Trump declared that Warmbier "should have been brought home a long time ago" and should have been “bought home that same day,” leaving some doubt about what day that was, but no doubt about where he laid the blame for Warmbier’s death.
President Trump on Tuesday called the death of Otto Warmbier... “a total disgrace” and indirectly blamed former president Barack Obama for not securing the University of Virginia student's release sooner.
However, in the rush to condemn Obama for not securing an instant release, Trump seems to have forgotten something. Actually, two things.
North Korea has detained a US citizen on suspicion of "hostile acts" against the regime, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Sunday. … He is the second US professor working at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology to be detained in recent months, taking the total number of US citizens detained by the state to four.
Both of those professors were taken since Trump’s inauguration. Neither of them got released “that same day” or on any day since.
Just to make sure you got the point, Trump added this tweet to drive it home.