President Donald Trump warned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Friday that he will “truly regret it” if his isolated country messes with the United States, as the tensions are circling in U.S. and its allies of a possible strike to be ordered by Kim on Guam, a Pacific military base of U.S.
Early Friday, Trump appeared to tweet in a response to North Korea’s recent threats saying US military options were “locked and loaded” for use if Pyongyang acts unwisely. He also hoped that Kim would find another path.
It was the third consecutive day that Trump expressed such aggression to North Korea’s actions against the United States. Past week, Trump had said that U.S. will deal with “fire and fury’ with North Korea, which created an angry reaction from the Korean side and a threat to strike U.S. Pacific territory, Guam.
Friday’s tweet triggered alarms worldwide and peacemakers couldn’t be agreed with Trump. German chancellor, Angela Merkel addressed in a reaction to the statement, “I consider an escalation of rhetoric the wrong answer.”
Later, when Trump was asked in his golf resort in New Jersey whether he meant it, he stood by his word. “I hope they are going to fully understand the gravity of what I said, and what I said is what I mean,” Trump said. “Those words are very, very easy to understand.”
Then he posed an ultimatum to Kim Jong-un himself. “This man will not get away with what he’s doing,” he said. “If he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat ..or if he does anything with respect to Guam or anyplace else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it and he will regret it fast.”
Defense Secretary James Mattis said on Thursday night that diplomatic attempts to suppress the threat by North Korea remain the favored means for solving the crisis. He noted that the UN Security Council, in a rare display of unanimity over North Korea, passed a resolution that tightened sanctions against Kim’s regime.
North Korea has already warned U.S. that it will be launching four missiles toward Guam if the United States military keeps patrolling the region with long-range bombers based on the island.
There’s no change in US diplomatic order in the region or change in the deployed forces. And there was a news appeared on Friday that a channel of negotiation was opened between U.S. and North Korea at the UN.
Following response came from the President when Asked about the news on Friday, Trump said, “Well, we don’t want to talk about progress, we don’t want to talk about back channels.
“We want to talk about a country that has misbehaved for many many years – decades, actually – through numerous administrations, and they didn’t want to take on the issue and I had no choice but to take it on, and I’m taking it on. And we’ll either be very, very successful quickly or we’re going to be very, very successful in a different way, quickly.”
When he was asked about Merkel’s criticism on his comment Trump said, “Maybe she’s speaking for Germany; let her speak for Germany. She’s a friend of mine, she’s a very good person, a very good woman, she’s a friend of Ivanka. Perhaps she is referring to Germany. She’s certainly not referring to the United States, that I can tell you.”
About 35,000 troops are reserved in South Korea and 40,000 in Japan. But no alert has ringed so far to deploy the forces into battle station despite the heated rhetoric.
Ahh that bitch