“President Trump signaled Sunday that he does not believe that attempts at direct communications with North Korea are worth the effort despite escalating tensions between Washington and Pyongyang,” the Washington Post reports.
“A day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested that the United States maintains ‘lines of communications’ with Kim Jong Un’s regime, Trump wrote on Twitter that Tillerson is ‘wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man’ — his nickname for Kim.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged in Beijing on Saturday that the Trump administration is in “direct contact” with North Korea over its recent escalation of missile and nuclear tests, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Said Tillerson: “We’re not in a dark situation, a blackout. We have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang. We can talk to them, we do talk to them.”
“The acknowledgment suggests a potential deescalation after months of bellicose rhetoric on both sides, as well as repeated, provocative intercontinental ballistic missile tests and a nuclear test by North Korea.”
“North Korean government officials have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of President Trump and his confusing messages to Kim Jong Un’s regime,” the Washington Post reports.
“The outreach began before the current eruption of threats between the two leaders but will probably become only more urgent as Trump and Kim have descended into name-calling that, many analysts worry, sharply increases the chances of potentially catastrophic misunderstandings.”
Said one Republican: “Their number one concern is Trump. They can’t figure him out.”
“North Korea’s foreign minister asserted that the pariah state has the right to defend itself by shooting down U.S. planes, even if they are not in the country’s airspace,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Ri Yong Ho: “The whole world should clearly remember it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country.”
He added: “Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.”
On Saturday, President Trump tweeted about North Korea saying “they won’t be around much longer!”
New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s willingness to casually threaten to annihilate a nuclear-armed foe was yet another reminder of the steep risks inherent in his brute-force approach to diplomacy. His strengths as a politician — the ability to appeal in a visceral way to the impulses of ordinary citizens — are a difficult fit for the meticulous calculations that his own advisers concede are crucial in dealing with Pyongyang.”
“The disconnect has led to a deep uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump is all talk or actually intends to act. The ambiguity could be strategic, part of an effort to intimidate Mr. Kim and keep him guessing. Or it could reflect a rash impulse by a leader with little foreign policy experience to vent his anger and stoke his supporters’ enthusiasm.”
“North Korea’s foreign minister says that it is inevitable that missiles from his country will hit the United States after the American military flew bombers further north of the demilitarised zone than any American military plane in the 21st century, and after a week in which Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un exchanged personal insults,” the Independent reports.
“Senior aides to President Trump repeatedly warned him not to deliver a personal attack on North Korea’s leader at the United Nations this week, saying insulting the young despot in such a prominent venue could irreparably escalate tensions and shut off any chance for negotiations to defuse the nuclear crisis,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Trump’s derisive description of Kim Jong Un as ‘Rocket Man on a suicide mission’ and his threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea were not in a speech draft that several senior officials reviewed and vetted Monday.”
“Some of Trump’s top aides, including national security advisor H.R. McMaster, had argued for months against making the attacks on North Korea’s leader personal, warning it could backfire. But Trump felt compelled to take a harder line.”
NBC New York: “An I-Team investigation found North Korea’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations has racked up more than 1,300 unpaid New York City parking tickets going back to the 1990s. As of this year, the total debt has climbed to more than $156,000.”
“Responding directly for the first time to President Trump’s threat at the United Nations to destroy nuclear-armed North Korea, its leader called Mr. Trump a ‘mentally deranged U.S. dotard’ on Friday and vowed the ‘highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history,'” the New York Times reports.
“Although Mr. Kim is often quoted by official North Korean news media, it is highly unusual for him to issue a statement in his name. In North Korea, the supreme leader’s statement carries a weight that surpasses any other formal document.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports Trump “announced new financial sanctions targeting North Korea as his administration seeks to build international support for more aggressively confronting the rogue nation.”
Honolulu Civil Beat: “Dozens of legislators and their staffers met behind closed doors Tuesday to hear a briefing by state Emergency Management Agency officials on preparedness for a North Korea nuclear strike on Hawaii.”
“Some lawmakers who attended stressed that the secret meeting was not called because of any immediate threat to the islands. Instead, it was a discussion of how to help the public prepare.”
President Trump threatened that, if the United States is forced to defend itself or its allies, “we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “No nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. The U.S. has great strength and patience but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
He added: “Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself.”
“North Korea conducted its longest-ever test flight of a ballistic missile Friday, sending an intermediate-range weapon hurtling over U.S. ally Japan into the northern Pacific Ocean in a launch that signals both defiance to its rivals and a big technological advance,” the AP reports.
“Since President Trump threatened the North with ‘fire and fury’ in August, Pyongyang has conducted its most powerful nuclear test, threatened to send missiles into the waters around the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam and launched two missiles of increasing range over Japan. July saw its first tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected.”
“The growing frequency, power and confidence displayed by these tests seem to confirm what governments and outside experts have long feared: North Korea is closer than ever to its goal of building a military arsenal that can viably target both U.S. troops in Asia and the U.S. homeland.”
“We should be cold-blooded and we should avoid steps to escalate tension. Without political and diplomatic levels, this situation will be very difficult to resolve and I think even impossible to do.”
— Russian president Vladimir Putin, quoted by CNN, on the escalating conflict with North Korea.
“They’ll eat grass, but they won’t abandon their program unless they feel secure.”
— Russian president Vladimir Putin, quoted by Bloomberg, arguing that sanctions against North Korea are “useless and ineffective.”
Defense Secretary James Mattis issued a stark warning to North Korea if it threatened the U.S. or its allies, The Hill reports.
Said Mattis: “Any threat to the United States or its territories including Guam or our allies will be met with a massive military response.”
He added: “Kim Jong Un should take heed the United Nations Security Council’s unified voice. All members unanimously agreed on the threat North Korea poses. And they remain unanimous in their commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Because we are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely, North Korea.”
“North Korea carried out its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in an extraordinary show of defiance against President Trump on Sunday, saying it had detonated a hydrogen bomb that could be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile,” the New York Times reports.
“The test, which the North called a ‘complete success,’ was the first to clearly surpass the destructive power of the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.”
Washington Post: “Even if Kim Jong Un’s regime is exaggerating its feats, scientific evidence showed that North Korea had crossed an important threshold and had detonated a nuclear device that was exponentially more powerful than its last — and almost seven times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.”
“All options are on the table.”
— President Trump, quoted by Politico, in a statement on North Korea’s latest provocation.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has decided not to launch a threatened missile attack on Guam, Pyongyang’s state media reported, but warned that he could change his mind “if the Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Mr. Kim added that the planned launch could still be carried out at any moment, and said that such a strike would be a “most delightful historic moment” that would “wring the windpipes of the Yankees and point daggers at their necks.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →