Donald Trump boasts that his nuclear button is bigger than Kim Jong-un's
Donald Trump has taunted North Korea’s leader about the size of his nuclear arsenal after his UN envoy, Nikki Haley, dismissed the value of proposed high-level talks between Pyongyang and Seoul. The US president used Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Day speech as the basis for his latest provocative tweet against the leader, whom he has previously referred to as “little rocket man”, saying the “nuclear button” in Washington is “much bigger and more powerful” than Kim’s – “and my button works!”. In the speech, Kim warned the United States his country’s nuclear forces were now “completed”, adding that the nuclear launch button was always within easy reach. Trump’s retort came hours after Haley distanced the White House from proposed contacts between North and South Korea, saying it would not take any talks seriously if Pyongyang did not abandon its nuclear arsenal. A few hours later on Wednesday, the North reopened a vital line of communication with South, raising hopes of a diplomatic thaw. The president’s tweet drew swift condemnation – and some snark – from Democrats and foreign policy experts. Reacting on CNN, Democratic congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut said Trump’s tweet has “Freudians” abuzz and shows an impulse “to demonstrate that his is bigger and stronger than anybody else’s”. However, Himes added, a more sobering consequence of Trump’s hyperbolic rhetoric is that “it really doesn’t matter what the president of the United States says any more because it’s so bizarre, strange, not true, infantile”. Trump’s first day in Washington of 2018 made it clear his resolutions don’t include Twitter abstention. Eliot Cohen, a former top official in the George W Bush administration and a Trump critic, said the president’s pronouncement was “spoken like a petulant 10-year-old”. “But one with nuclear weapons – for real – at his disposal,” Cohen said. “How responsible people around him, or supporting him, can dismiss this or laugh it off is beyond me.” Source URL |
