Trump is criticized for inflammatory rhetoric aimed at North Korea, but the words may be part of a strategy
President Trump ’s chilling threat to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea sent shock waves across the Pacific, but the administration argued Wednesday that it was carefully crafted for a special audience of one: Kim Jong Un.
By reminding North Korea’s young ruler in crude terms of America’s vastly larger nuclear arsenal, Trump appeared to be playing a diplomatic good-cop, bad-cop routine with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has repeatedly called for finding a way to resume negotiations with the government in Pyongyang.
“What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un would understand because he doesn’ t seem to understand diplomatic language, ” Tillerson said en route to Guam after a diplomatic swing through Southeast Asia. “I think it was important that he deliver that message to avoid any miscalculation on their part.”
Less clear is whether it was an intentional strategy or an improvised gambit by an administration struggling to find its footing in an international crisis. The White House confirmed that Trump had ad-libbed his grim warning Tuesday, but insisted he did so only after consulting with his national security advisors.
“The words were his own, ” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters near the president’s golf resort in Bedminster, N. J., where he is on a working vacation. “The tone and strength of the message were discussed beforehand.”
“We are all on the same page, ” agreed Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman. “We are speaking with one voice. And the world is speaking with one voice.”
It was easier to hear a cacophony of voices Wednesday from the Trump team and from around the world, however, a jarring mix of messages that did little to ease tensions.
Speaking to reporters, Tillerson called for calm, saying that America does not face “any imminent threat, in my own view” and that “Americans should sleep well at night.”
Hours later, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis spoke of America’s military might and warned Pyongyang to “cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”
Pyongyang initially responded by saying it was considering a missile strike against U. S. military bases on the Pacific island of Guam. But on Wednesday, the Korean People’s Army broadened its aim, threatening to “turn the U. S. mainland into the theater of a nuclear war.”
Pyongyang also organized a giant rally, complete with propaganda posters and waving fists, to showcase the country’s military fervor.
