Just weeks after his surprising election, Donald Trump shocked the political world when he called for a “nuclear arms race” during an interview with “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski. Well, less than 100 days into his presidency, Trump seems to be working hard to fulfill his wish of a nuclear war with North Korea.
Kim Jong Un knows that —a weak-minded and media-attention-hungry— president Trump can easily be tricked into a crazy response and create a crisis situation. So he’s playing Trump like a fiddle.
But Trump would be best served by simply ignoring the provocations of the North Korean dictator, a former director of the CIA said Friday.
“Trump making it worse” by replying with a show of force. “We have a new president and Kim Jong Un is trying to challenge him, is trying to get him back to the negotiating table,” former CIA acting Director Mike Morell said Friday on “CBS This Morning,” praising former President Barack Obama for largely ignoring the North Korean regime’s efforts at saber rattling.
Kim Jong Un wants to get back to a situation where we give them gifts when they do something bad. And then we are also making it worse, right? With our bluster and by sending aircraft carriers in there, we’re raising the crisis.”
Trump is not only deploying an aircraft carrier to the region, He has turned up the heat on his rhetoric toward North Korea as well.
On Thursday, after news broke that the U.S. had dropped one of its largest non-nuclear weapons on an Islamic State target in Afghanistan, Trump told reporters that “I don’t know if this sends a message” to North Korea, adding that “it doesn’t make any difference if it does or not.”
“North Korea is a problem,” he continued. “The problem will be taken care of.”
North Korea, for its part, has responded with its typical bellicose rhetoric, warning in a statement to CNN that “is prepared for war with the U.S. should it come to that.”
“we will make the US fully accountable for the catastrophic consequences that may be brought about by its high-handed and outrageous acts,” North Korea’s vice foreign minister told The Associated Press.
“We’ve got a powerful nuclear deterrent already in our hands, and we certainly will not keep our arms crossed in the face of a U.S. preemptive strike,” he said. “Whatever comes from the U.S., we will cope with it. We are fully prepared to handle it.”
There you have it, folks. Two deranged leaders with nuclear bombs. What could possibly go wrong?
