Top Trump economic advisor suffers heart attack

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - President Donald Trump said Monday that Larry Kudlow, his top economic advisor, has been hospitalized following a heart attack.

"Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack," Trump said on Twitter mere minutes before he was set to sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore.

Kudlow, 70, is being treated at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside of the nation's capital, Trump said.

He has been a point person defending the president's recent controversial decision to apply economic penalties on steel and aluminum imports. The tariffs have roiled close allies in Europe, Mexico and Canada, threatening possible trade wars amid vows of retaliation.

Kudlow most recently joined Trump at the Group of Seven summit in Canada where the metals duties were a source of major tension between the leaders of the world's seven largest advanced economies.

Following the summit, Kudlow told CNN that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has been a target of Trump's ire, "really kind of stabbed us in the back".

Kudlow battled cocaine and alcohol addiction during the early 1990's, telling the New York Times he has been sober for nearly 23 years.

He is Trump's second National Economic Council director after replacing Gary Cohn, who resigned in March over the metals tariffs.

Additional information on Kudlow's condition was not immediately available.