With All Due Respect by Nikki R. Haley

Author:Nikki R. Haley [Nikki R. Haley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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DURING THIS SAME TIME I was developing a relationship with Fred and Cindy Warmbier. As a mom, I hurt for them. We met several times. Sometimes he was the stronger one, sometimes she was. It was always painful. But they were very grateful about what we had done to bring Otto home and to take on the Kim regime. Even though Otto had died, they were thankful that we had been loud about their son, that we had stood up in public to advocate for him in the way the Obama administration never did.

I met with a number of the families of hostages during my time at the UN. The Warmbiers were a lesson for me. After meeting them, I always told other families to speak up for their loved ones. Be loud, I said, because the countries holding them get embarrassed when you expose them. It’s not a moral response on their part, it’s a tactical one. Just like the North Koreans, they don’t want U.S. hostages to die in their custody. The Kim regime only sent Otto home because they knew he was going to die. The great tragedy of the whole situation is that the United States didn’t begin to speak out about Otto until it was too late.

As moms, Cindy and I bonded especially closely. Cindy said she pulled her strength from me. If I could go out and face the North Koreans in the Security Council, she said, she knew she could do more to get justice for Otto. After his death, Otto’s friends got tattoos of a design that spelled his name. Otto’s high school art teacher turned the design into a pendant for a necklace that Cindy and Fred gave to me. From then on, whenever I spoke about North Korea I wore it.

The Warmbiers also developed a relationship with President Trump. They were his guests at his 2018 State of the Union Address. They rose to a standing ovation in the gallery of the House Chamber when President Trump mentioned Otto’s treatment by the North Korean regime. But as President Trump’s rhetoric warmed toward Kim Jong Un, Fred and Cindy had an understandably hard time. It was difficult for them to separate the murder of their son from the larger effort to denuclearize North Korea. They were careful not to say anything in public, but they let me know when they thought their son’s memory was being disrespected.

When the White House came out with a commemorative coin in advance of President Trump’s first summit meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June 2018, Cindy texted me that she was deeply upset. She felt it was a glorification of the man she held responsible for her son’s death. She called me, just to rant. I listened to her. It was the least I could do.

Then, after the second summit in Hanoi in February 2019, President Trump appeared to absolve Kim from any responsibility for Otto’s death.

“I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen,” the president said in a post-summit news conference.

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