Trump to Woodward: U.S. came close to war with North Korea
Jim Mattis slept in his gym clothes when he was President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense so he could more quickly join a top-secret conference call whenever he received an alert that a North Korean missile had been launched or was on the launchpad.
A flashing light was installed in his home’s bathroom so he would know immediately, if such an alert came while he was showering. A bell also would ring in the bedroom and kitchen.
This happened several times during the summer of 2017, according to Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward’s new book.
The coverage of “Rage” has focused on Trump willfully downplaying the seriousness of the novel coronavirus during the early stages of the pandemic. But perhaps the most chilling revelation in the book, which went on sale Tuesday, is just how real the danger of a nuclear confrontation with North Korea seemed to the leaders of the U.S. government three summers ago.
The schoolyard taunts from that time received plenty of attention. Kim Jong Un called Trump a “dotard.” Trump referred to Kim as “little rocket man” and promised to rain down “fire and fury” if provoked.
But there were also a series of missile launches and significant tactical escalations by both sides, including a simulated air attack by the U.S. Air Force that registered little domestic attention.
In one of his 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward for the book, Trump told Woodward that war with Pyongyang was “much closer than anyone would know.”
The president argued that conflict was averted because of his flattering letters to and three faceto-face meetings with the 30something totalitarian leader. Trump said Kim was “totally prepared” for war. “And he expected to go,” the president said. “But we met.”
Trump still points to North Korea as one of his greatest triumphs.
“There was no war,” the president said. But he acknowledged to Woodward that Kim hasn’t given up any of his nuclear weapons, using a real estate metaphor to explain why.
“It’s really like, you know, somebody that’s in love with a house and they just can’t sell it,” he said.
Mattis said he didn’t think Trump would order a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, but Woodward wrote that plans for decapitation strikes were dusted off and ready to go.
“The Strategic Command in Omaha had carefully reviewed and studied OPLAN 5027 for regime change in North Korea — the U.S. response to an attack that could include the use of 80 nuclear weapons,” he reports. “A plan for a leadership strike, OPLAN 5015, had also been updated.”
Mattis, who resigned in protest at the end of 2018, expected Trump would follow his recommendation on whether to use nukes.
“You’re going to incinerate a couple million people,” Mattis told himself, according to the book. “No person has the right to kill a million people as far as I’m concerned, yet that’s what I have to confront.”