White House defends tweet, says Trump won’t ‘cower down’
The White House on Wednesday dismissed criticism of President Trump’s taunt that his “Nuclear Button” is larger and more effective than North Korea’s arsenal, arguing he will respond strongly to provocations from Pyongyang rather than “cower down.”
Democrats and some security analysts warned that the tweet sent Tuesday night by Trump risked needlessly provoking North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a time when concerns over a nuclear altercation, once seen as remote, have grown more plausible and as North and South Korea have engaged in talks to ease tensions on the peninsula.
“He’s made repeated threats. He’s tested missiles time and time again for years,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of Kim. “This is a president who is not going cower down and is not going to be weak and is going to make sure he does what he’s promised to do, and that’s stand up and protect the American people.”
Democrats were quick to condemn Trump’s tweet and called on him to stop ratcheting up tensions with the rogue nation.
“A nuclear conflict on the Korean Peninsula would be a catastrophe, leading to the deaths of potentially millions of people, including American service members and families stationed there,” Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement, adding that the tweet “borders on presidential malpractice.”
South Korea and North Korea held their own call hours after Trump’s message — the first such use of a cross-border hotline in two years.
A senior State Department official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, welcomed the contact, perhaps as a means to ease tension ahead of South Korea’s hosting of the Winter Olympics in a few weeks.
But the North Korean offer of some kind of talks with Seoul has been widely interpreted as a play to drive a wedge between the United States and the new, less hawkish South Korean government.
“We are in close contact” with South Korea, the State Department official said. “We are on the same page and coordinating closely,” but “extremely skeptical” that North Korea is serious about embarking on talks aimed at giving up its nuclear weapons.