‘MAJOR, MAJOR’ MENACE
North Korea test fails; U.S. pushes sanctions
President Trump denounced North Korea’s unsuccessful test-fire of a ballistic missile as an affront to its closest ally, China, last night.
“North Korea disrespected the wishes of China & its highly respected President when it launched, though unsuccessfully, a missile today. Bad!” Trump tweeted last night, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The rogue regime launched a missile — believed by U.S. officials to have been a medium-range KN-17 — but it broke up into pieces just minutes after ignition and fell into the Sea of Japan.
It came just hours after Trump warned a “major, major conflict” with North Korea is possible and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pushed for tougher economic sanctions at the United Nations.
The test-firing would be the second humiliating missile failure for North Korea in the last two weeks, but U.S. officials believe dictator Kim Jong Un will eventually develop the capability to launch a nuclear missile.
“With each successive detonation and missile test, North Korea pushes Northeast Asia and the world closer to instability and broader conflict,” Tillerson told the UN yesterday before the launch.
“The threat of a North Korean nuclear attack on Seoul, or Tokyo, is real. And it is likely only a matter of time before North Korea develops the capability to strike the U.S. mainland,” he said.
Tillerson called on countries to “suspend or downgrade” diplomatic relations with North Korea as well as to levy new sanctions on the hermit nation’s “entities and individuals” supporting the weapons program.
Trump told Reuters on Thursday that his administration would prefer a diplomatic outcome, but warned force may be the only resort.
“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea,” Trump said. “Absolutely.”
Today marks Trump’s 100th day in office — a milestone that’s getting even more hype than usual by mainstream media outlets unloading an onslaught of backward-looking pieces and report cards.
Trump will hold a rally tonight in Harrisburg, Pa., a state he surprisingly won in November, becoming the first Republican to do so since 1988.
Yesterday Trump spoke to the National Rifle Association, an event that resembled a campaign-style rally.
“It’s time to get tough, it’s time we finally got smart, and, yes, it’s also time to put America first,” said Trump, who later invoked Paul Revere’s famous ride and the battles of Lexington and Concord to hail gun owners’ rights.
And he couldn’t resist looking ahead to his reelection campaign in 2020, predicting he may face off against Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“It may be Pocahontas, remember that,” said Trump, mocking the Bay State senator’s claims of a Native American ancestry.
Warren first faces her own re-election campaign to the Senate in 2018.
Earlier in the day, Trump re-tweeted a “Fox & Friends” report quoting Warren in an interview with SiriusXM that she “was troubled” by former President Obama collecting $400,000 from a Wall Street firm for giving a speech this week.
Trump continues to boast about the 306 electoral votes he captured in November despite the dismissiveness of pundits and reporters in the weeks leading up to the election. He brought up the campaign at the NRA gathering in Georgia and also during an interview with Reuters.
“Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers,” Trump said, handing out electoral college maps from his desk in the Oval Office to all three Reuters reporters. “It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.”
Trump also told the news agency he misses his old days as a semi-private citizen.
“I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump told Reuters. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”
Meanwhile, Trump predicted Republicans would soon pass a proposed replacement for Obamacare.
“I believe they’re going to get it done,” Trump told Fox News Channel. “I think maybe next week sometime. They’re really coming together.”