President Trump called himself the “greatest hostage negotiator this country has ever had” at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wis., on Saturday night.
“The other day our great hostage negotiator made the statement that Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator this country has ever had,” Trump said, referring to a tweet he shared the day before in which he claimed a “Cheif Hostage Negotiator (sic)” called him the “greatest hostage negotiator” in U.S. history.
“I put it out. Why not? You know, a lot of time if you are not going to brag about it, no one else is. You might as well do it. True,” he said.
“So, our ambassador made the statement and the press picked it up and they were going after me, ‘It’s not true,’ ‘It’s not true,’” Trump continued. “And then he called them and he said, ‘No, it is true.”
“And instead of saying, ‘It’s true,’ they stopped talking about it,” Trump said, referring to the news media. “Fake news.”
According to The Washington Post, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders attributed the original quote Trump shared on Twitter lauding himself as the “greatest hostage negotiator” in U.S. history to Robert C. O’Brien, who serves as a special presidential envoy for hostage affairs at the State Department.
Trump shared the quote on Twitter Friday shortly after he denied that the U.S. paid North Korea after the country reportedly billed the U.S. for treatment of Otto Warmbier, an American student who was held as prisoner by the foreign nation and later died shortly after returning home in a coma.