Washington DC: An "antsy and bored" Donald Trump reportedly attempted to bring his summit with Kim Jong-un of North Korea forward by a day, asking aides after his arrival in Singapore last Sunday: "We're here now. Why can't we just do it?"
The one-day summit, aimed at reducing the threat from nuclear-armed North Korea, went ahead as planned on Tuesday.
But on Thursday night, citing two people "familiar with preparations for the event", the Washington Post said the president's impatience and a "tense" staff meeting with North Korean officials left "left some aides fearful that the entire summit might be in peril".
In a Friday morning interview on the White House lawn with Fox & Friends, meanwhile, Trump risked provoking critics of his praise for Kim when he said the North Korean dictator was "the strong head" of his country.
"He speaks and his people sit up at attention," Trump said. "I want my people to do the same."
The president also claimed his predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama, had been "essentially ready to go to war with North Korea", then claimed to have "solved" the problem of the nuclear threat from Pyongyang.
Citing "people familiar with the talks", the Washington Post detailed how Trump's request to move the summit was parried by senior members of his administration.
"Ultimately," the Post wrote, "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders persuaded Trump to stick with the original plan, arguing that the president and his team could use the time to prepare."
"They also," the Post said, "warned him that he might sacrifice wall-to-wall television coverage of his summit if he abruptly moved the long-planned date to Monday in Singapore, which would be Sunday night in the United States."
Trump's preparation was long a point of contention. In May, after North Korea criticised his vice-president, Mike Pence, Trump said the summit was cancelled. He later said his approach was not about preparation, but "about attitude".
He then told a press conference in Canada before travelling to Singapore he would know "within the first minute" if the summit would be a success, thanks to "just my touch, my feel".
After meeting Kim, he told reporters he and the dictator "got to know each other well in a very confined period of time. I know when somebody wants to deal and I know when somebody doesn't".
The Post also reported Trump laughingly praising North Korean state TV. The president "joked that even … Fox News was not as lavish in its praise", the newspaper
said.
The Trump-Kim summit has been widely criticised in the US, in most part for the failure to secure written commitment to North Korean denuclearisation, which the Trump administration has repeatedly demanded.