Trump tweets of his ‘bigger and more powerful’ nuclear button
President Donald Trump, reacting to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un saying he had a “nuclear button on his desk” and was ready to use it against the United States, said on Twitter late Tuesday that his own nuclear button “is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” – @realDonaldTrump
Kim had said: “The entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons, and a nuclear button is always on my desk. This is reality, not a threat.”
South Korea proposed Tuesday that talks be held next week. A spokesman for the South Korean government said Seoul had consulted with the United States and had Washington’s go-ahead.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, warned North Korea earlier Tuesday against staging another missile test and said Washington would not take any talks between North and South Korea seriously if they did not do something to get Kim to give up his nuclear weapons.
“I hope that doesn’t happen. But if it does, we must bring even tougher measures to bear against the North Korean regime,” Haley said.
“I guess the president regards this as a show of strength,” Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN. “But as everybody who’s ever been in a, you know, first grade playground recognizes, it’s usually the person who’s most aggressively pounding their chest that is in fact the weak one on the playground.”
Eliot A. Cohen, who was counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under President George W. Bush, said the tweet demonstrated an immaturity that is dangerous in a commander in chief.
“Spoken like a petulant ten year old,” Cohen wrote on Twitter. “But one with nuclear weapons — for real — at his disposal. How responsible people around him, or supporting him, can dismiss this or laugh it off is beyond me.”