Donald Trump claimed the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics would not have happened if it weren’t for him, in an interview with political talk show host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. 

The former U.S. president, who is currently vying for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2024 election, told Carlson that he persuaded North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to send DPRK athletes to the Winter Games and claimed that if he had not been elected in 2016, a nuclear war would have broken out on the peninsula. 

Trump stated, “[He] did a great job with North Korea. It kept us out of a nuclear war. We would have 40,000 dead soldiers right now,” in the interview which was posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. 

According to U.S. government statistics, there are 28,500 U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea.

“The Olympics was dead. South Korea spent billions on the Olympics. Nobody was going to go. They didn’t want to get blown up,” Trump told Carlson.

Trump claimed he told Kim, “‘You should go into the Olympics. Put your athletes in.’ They went in and they actually participated. The 45th U.S. president added, “within about two days, the entire thing was sold out. If it wasn’t for me, it would have never happened.” 

Trump has previously taken credit for dialogue between North and South Korea about the Olympics in 2018. 

The interview with Carlson coincided with the first Republican presidential debate of the election season, which Trump decided not to attend. 

None of the eight Republican candidates made any mention of North Korea when they took to the stage Wednesday in Milwaukee, a possible indication that DPRK issues are failing to position themselves in U.S. mainstream politics. 

“I think Russia, Ukraine, China and Taiwan issues overwhelmed North Korea,” former Special Adviser on National Security and Foreign Affairs Moon Chung In, told NK News. 

“Moreover,  Republicans do not seem to take North Korean nuclear threats very seriously.”

Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University and director at Korea Risk Group, cited “repetitive failures of negotiations,” as a reason why North Korea issues were not touched on during the presidential debate. 

“This implies that a future president would not be able to gain domestic political capital by engaging with North Korea, rendering the topic less appealing for public discourse,” Lankov told NK News.

Republican nominee Chris Christie, criticized Trump last month for not hindering Kim’s weapons programs while he was president.

“I don’t think by calling Kim Jong Un a great guy he stopped him from continuing to develop missile technology that now allows those missiles to reach the United States,” Christie told Piers Morgan on Fox News.

Edited by Alannah Hill