‘GAS’ BLAST @ KIM
Trump’s ‘Rocket Man’ dig
President Trump mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Sunday, calling him “Rocket Man” and suggesting in an early morning tweet that UN sanctions over Kim’s weapons program are causing “long gas lines” in the Hermit Kingdom.
“I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night. Asked him how Rocket Man is doing. Long gas lines forming in North Korea. Too bad!” Trump wrote.
The United Nations Security Council last week imposed a new round of sanctions against Kim’s regime for carrying out a successful detonation of a nuclear device earlier this month — the country’s sixth. The penalties include tight restrictions on oil and textile imports.
Asked if Trump has coined a new term for the North Korean despot, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said he thinks the moniker has been around for a while.
“That’s a new one, I think, maybe for the president. But it reminds me of a cover of The Economist a few years ago portraying him as Rocket Man,” McMaster said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“But of course that’s where the rockets are coming from. Rockets, though, that we probably [should] not laugh too much about because they do represent a grave threat to everyone.”
Trump is known for using nicknames to mock or ridicule his enemies. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he derided his major opponent as “Crooked Hillary,” while lambasting fellow Republicans including Sen. “Little Marco” Rubio, Sen. “Lyin Ted” Cruz and “Low Energy Jeb” Bush.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that if diplomacy fails to rein in Kim’s threatening behavior, Defense Secretary James Mattis “will take care of it.”
“We wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get their attention first. If that doesn’t work, General Mattis will take care of it,” Haley said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed, and we know that and none of us want that,” she added. “None of us want war.”
Trump has refused to rule out using military force against North Korea and has said any threats against the United States or its allies would be met with “fire and fury.”
Haley said the president’s words were “not an empty threat.”
“You have to ask the president what ‘fire and fury’ meant,” she told CNN. “We also have to look at the fact that you are dealing with someone who is being reckless, irresponsible and is continuing to give threats not only to the United States, but to all of their allies. So something is going to have to be done.
“We’re trying every other possibility that we have but there’s a whole lot of military options on the table.”