Was the United States on the verge of war against North Korea during the presidency of Barack Obama? Donald Trump has said he thinks so. “If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North
Was the United States on the verge of war against North Korea during the presidency of Barack Obama? Donald Trump has said he thinks so.
“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea with potentially millions of people killed,” Trump said during his State of the Union address.
He repeated the claim recently when announcing an emergency declaration on the U. S.-Mexico border wall, saying that Obama was particularly out to get North Korea.
“I said, ‘What’s the biggest problem?’ (Obama) said, ‘By far, North Korea.’ And I don’t want to speak for him, but I believe he would have gone to war with North Korea. I think he was ready to go to war,” Trump said. “In fact, he told me he was so close to starting a big war with North Korea.”
Trump’s comments are hypothetical, so we won’t put his remarks to the Truth-O-Meter. (We reached out to both the White House and Obama’s post-presidential office for their take on the conversation, but we didn’t hear back.)
But the claim struck us as strange. We could recall no serious discussion of imminent war with North Korea during the Obama administration.
We asked a range of North Korea and foreign-policy experts whether they thought it was likely, or even plausible, that the United States was on the precipice of war with North Korea during Obama’s tenure.
Universally, the experts we contacted said no.
