President Trump said the United States is "not going into Syria" and that he believes the situation would be better in the country had Obama taken action, in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

Despite his own tweets in 2013 when he urged Obama to stay out of Syria, Trump told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo he believes conditions there would not be as bad if Obama had responded earlier.

"When I see people using horrible, horrible chemical weapons, which they agreed not to use under the Obama administration, but they violated it," he said, "what I did should have been done by the Obama administration a long time before I did it. And I think Syria would be a lot better off than it has been."

The full interview, which was taped today, will air tomorrow morning on Fox Business between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET.

The president would not talk about what the U.S. is considering in regards to North Korea, but said that Kim Jong Un is "doing the wrong thing."

When asked about what the U.S. plans to do regarding North Korea, Trump said, "You never know, do you? You never know."

"I don’t talk about the military," he went on to say. "We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful. Far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you. And we have the best military people. And I will say this: He is doing the wrong thing."

Bartiromo asked Trump what he thinks about Kim Jong Un's state of mind.

"Do you think he is mentally fit?" she said.

"I don't know, I don't know," Trump replied. "I don't know him. But he’s doing the wrong thing."

The president told Bartiromo that he remains focused on tackling healthcare before he moves on to tax reform.

"We're going to have a phenomenal tax reform," Trump said. "But I have to do healthcare first. I want to do it first to really do it right."

Explaining the logic of moving on healthcare first, the president says he will be able to save a lot of money that will then be beneficial to taxes.

"Obamacare is a total mess," Trump said. "So we're saving tremendous amounts of money on healthcare when we get this done. Number one. And most importantly, actually, we're going to have great healthcare. All of that saving goes into the tax. If you don't do that, you can't put the savings in the tax cuts."

He would not put a deadline on when the agenda items will be accomplished but said he’ll move onto tax reform if healthcare doesn’t happen quickly enough.

This article first appeared on RobertReich.org.

1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it.

Then he bombed Syria.

2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it.

Now his secretary of homeland security says, “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”

3. He said he’d clean up the Washington swamp. You bought it.

Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.

4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it.

Then he didn’t.

Donald Trump enters the Rose Garden of the White House on April 10. Robert Reich writes that the president made a series of rash promises during the election, and the American people believed him. Now he is breaking every one.JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS

5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it.

Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, backstabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.

Related: Robert Reich: What the Kushner/Bannon brawl is all about

6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it.

He hasn’t, and says he never will.

7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it.

He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.

8. He said Hillary Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs and would do whatever they said. You bought it.

Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.

Related: Robert Reich: Where are the grown-ups in the White House?

9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, an opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, an opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, an opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it.

Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.

Related: Robert Reich: Trump’s smokescreen cannot hide the Russian link

11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it.

Then he green-lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen, even though his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year-old American girl and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained

12. He called Obama “the vacationer-in-chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it.

He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first three years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.

Related: Robert Reich: Four (or five) grounds for impeaching Trump

13. He called CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it.

More to come.Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit and InfoWars.

By Michael Martina and Christian Shepherd

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a peaceful resolution of rising tension on the Korean peninsula in a telephone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday, as a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group steamed towards the region.

Trump, in an early morning note on Twitter, said the call with Xi, just days after they met in the United States, was a "very good" discussion of the "menace of North Korea". The call came as an influential state-run Chinese newspaper warned that the Korean peninsula was the closest it has been to a "military clash" since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006.

The communication between the leaders underscored the sense of urgency as tension escalates amid concern that reclusive North Korea could soon conduct a sixth nuclear test, or more missile launches, and Trump's threat of unilateral action to solve the problem.

Trump ordered the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to head to the Korean peninsula in an attempt to deter North Korea's nuclear and long-range missile ambitions, which it is developing in defiance of U.N. resolutions and sanctions.

He pressed Xi to do more to curb North Korea's nuclear programme when the two leaders held their first face-to-face meeting in Florida last week.

Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday that North Korea was "looking for trouble" and the United States would "solve the problem" with or without China's help.

Xi stressed in their telephone call that China "is committed to the target of denuclearization on the peninsula, safeguarding peace and stability on the peninsula, and advocates resolving problems through peaceful means", Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, who said Trump had initiated the call, urged everyone to lower the tension.

"We hope that the relevant parties do not adopt irresponsible actions. Under the current circumstances, this is very dangerous," Lu told reporters at a regular press briefing.

China's Global Times newspaper said in an editorial that North Korea should halt any plan for nuclear and missile activities "for its own security". While widely read in China and run by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily, the Global Times does not represent government policy.

The newspaper noted Trump's recent decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield in response to a deadly gas attack last week.

"Not only is Washington brimming with confidence and arrogance following the missile attacks on Syria, but Trump is also willing to be regarded as a man who honours his promises," it said.

"The U.S. is making up its mind to stop the North from conducting further nuclear tests. It doesn't plan to co-exist with a nuclear-armed Pyongyang," it said. "Pyongyang should avoid making mistakes at this time."

The Global Times said if North Korea made another provocative move, "Chinese society" might be willing to back unprecedented sanctions, "such as restricting oil imports".

'NOT AFRAID'

North Korean state media warned on Tuesday of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression.

Officials from the North, including leader Kim Jong Un, have indicated an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming.

North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying a satellite on April 13, 2012, marking the anniversary of the birth of North Korea's founding president Kim Il Sung.

Saturday will be the 105th anniversary of his birth.

In the North Korean capital, residents thronged boulevards on a sunny spring morning, some practising for a parade to be held on the weekend, with no visible sign of the tension.

"So long as we are with our supreme leader Marshall Kim Jong Un we are not afraid of anything," a woman who gave her name as Ri Hyon Sim told Reuters journalists, who were escorted by North Korean officials.

Russia has said it is worried about the possibility of a U.S. attack on North Korea and it would raise the issue with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian media quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying.

Earlier on Wednesday, two sources in Tokyo said Japan's navy planned exercises with the Carl Vinson carrier group in a joint show of force.