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Trump says "we will know next week" whether North Korea summit will happen June 12

President Trump on Wednesday said "we will know next week" whether the intended meeting with North Korea will take place June 12, after casting doubt on whether the Singapore summit would happen as planned. 

"Someday a date will happen. It could very well be June 12," the president told reporters Wednesday afternoon as he left the White House on his way to New York.

In a portion of an interview with Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade released Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump said there is a "good chance" the meeting could happen June 12, but also, "we'll see what happens."

On Tuesday, seated alongside South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Mr. Trump said the summit about denuclearization may not happen June 12. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the White House and State Department teams are still planning for June 12.

On a different topic Wednesday, the president reiterated that he made the right choice in firing FBI Director James Comey more than a year ago. The president spent much of his morning tweeting about the FBI allegedly spying on his campaign, after multiple outlets reported the FBI utilized a retired professor to meet with Trump campaign officials in 2016. Multiple former Trump campaign officials have been indicted as a part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling.

"I did a great service to this country by firing James Comey," Mr. Trump said Wednesday. 

The president is on his way to New York, where he will hold a roundtable discussion with members of Congress, law enforcement and people affected by violence perpetrated by MS-13 gang members. The roundtable comes after Mr. Trump called members of the gang "animals" last week, a comment he defended and the White House doubled down on afterwards.

"We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in -- and we're stopping a lot of them -- but we're taking people out of the country," Mr. Trump said last week at a roundtable about crimes committed by illegal immigrants. " You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals. And we're taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that's never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It's crazy."

The White House doubled down on that sentiment later, sending out a list of talking points on MS-13 that dubbed the gang members "animals" more than a dozen times.

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