President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. is ‘totally prepared’ for a war with North Korea.
‘If we take that option, it will be devastating, I can tell you that, devastating for North Korea,’ Trump said during a Rose Garden news conference. ‘That’s called the military option. If we have to take it we will,’ he added.
Kim Jong-Un is ‘acting very badly,’ Trump charged, and ‘saying things that should never, ever be said.’
But North Korea’s nuclear ambitions should have been curbed 25 years ago, Trump argued.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. is ‘totally prepared’ for a war with North Korea
The White House said yesterday that North Korea’s claim that President Trump declared war on the isolated regime is ‘absurd’.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s press secretary, threw cold water on Pyongyang’s claim that the regime could now legally fire at U.S. bombers.
Kim Jong-un’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters in New York earlier Monday, ‘The whole world should clearly remember it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country.
‘Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.’
But hours later Sanders, at the White House’s daily press briefing, said: ‘We have not declared war on North Korea. Frankly, the suggestion of that is absurd.’
Push back: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, called the claim that Trump had declared war on Kim Jong-un ‘absurd’
North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho speaking through an interpreter, was at the United Nations when he claimed the countries were at war thanks to Trumps use of Twitter
Stand firm: Donald Trump, who was signing a memo on access to science, technology, engineering and math, has attacked North Korea repeatedly on Twitter – especially ‘little Rocket man’ Kim Jong-un
Firepower: The Air Force released an image of one of the B-1B Lancers which was used to fly a mission, escorted by F-15Cs, off North Korea’s coast this weekened
She added, ‘It’s never appropriate for a country to shoot down another country’s aircraft when it’s over international waters.
‘Our goal is still the same: We continue to seek the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula — that’s our focus — doing that through both the most maximum economic and diplomatic pressures as possible at this point.’
Over the weekend, the U.S. flew B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighters off the coast of North Korea.
The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday.
The U.S. characterized the flights as extending farther north of the Demilitarized Zone, than any U.S. fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.
B-1 bombers are no longer part of the U.S. nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.
Ri justified his claim that the countries were at war by saying that Trump’s tweets were the method of declaring war.
‘Trump claimed our leadership would not be around much longer. He declared a war on our country,’ the minister said.
The U.S. president raised the issue on Twitter last weekend.
‘Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!’ Trump said in a Saturday tweet.
Ri threatened to shoot down American aircraft from international airspace in response.
‘The question of who will be around much longer will be answered then,’ he added.
North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho arrives to address the 72nd session of the United Nations General assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 23
Ri, who made the comments before leaving New York where he had attended last week’s UN General Assembly, returned from his car to the press microphones explicitly to add: ‘In light of the declaration of war by Trump, all options will be on the operations table of the supreme leadership of the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea).’
His words echoed warnings from the Trump administration that all options were on the table in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and its threats to have a weapon capable of reaching the continental United States.
The Pentagon says Trump will have multiple options to deal with Pyongyang if North Korea does not stop with its ‘provocative actions’.
A close friend of the president’s told DailyMail.com on Monday that he believes there’s a ‘growing consensus’ in the White House that a preemptive strike on North Korea is the best way to deter Kim.
‘I think there’s a growing consensus among people in the White House for a preemptive attack, because they don’t really see what the third option is. How do you get Kim to actually agree to let’s say, freeze his weapons without us having to agree to a freeze. Trump’s not going to agree to any freeze on our side,’ the friend, Chris Ruddy, said.
Couching his comments, Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax said: ‘My gut feeling, no one has told me this, is that by next year, if all options fail, you could see a military action within six months to stop Kim’s nuclear and missile development.’
‘But Trump’s also ready to go if Kim does something crazy,’ he added.
On Saturday, Ri told the UN General Assembly that targeting the US mainland with its rockets was inevitable after ‘Mr Evil President’ Trump called Pyongyang’s leader a ‘rocket man’ on a suicide mission in his UNGA remarks.
The rogue government released a propaganda video depicting North Korean missiles blowing up US aircraft carrier and a plane in response to Trump’s perceived aggression.
The state-run DPRK Today released the clip Sunday that shows the USS Carl Vinson going up in flames after a Pukguksong missile is launched.
North Korea’s video brands the American President a ‘mad man’ and states any attack on the country would see US forces ‘head to the grave’.
In an unprecedented direct statement on Friday, Kim described Trump as a ‘mentally deranged US dotard’ whom he would tame with fire.
Kim said North Korea would consider the ‘highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history’ against the United States and that Trump’s comments had confirmed his nuclear programme was ‘the correct path’.
North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb test on September 3. Pyongyang said on Friday it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.
Trump threatened in his maiden UN address last Tuesday to ‘totally destroy’ the country of 26 million people if North Korea threatened the United States or its allies.