Trump threatens ‘fire, fury’ against N. Korea

Associated Press

BRIDGEWATER, N.J.

President Donald Trump threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen” on Tuesday after suggestions the communist country has mastered one of the final hurdles to being able to strike the United States with a nuclear missile.

North Korea said it was examining its operational plans for attacking Guam – a U.S. territory about 2,100 miles away – in order to contain U.S. military activity there. The North Korean army said in a statement distributed today by the state-run news agency that it is studying a plan to create an “enveloping fire” in areas around Guam with medium- to long-range ballistic missiles. Guam is home to Andersen Air Force Base.

The competing threats escalated tensions between the foes even further. Although it wasn’t clear if Trump and the Koreans were responding directly to each other, the heightened rhetoric added to the potential for a miscalculation that might bring the nuclear-armed nations into conflict.

Trump’s stern words to the camera at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., came hours after reports indicating North Korea can now wed nuclear warheads with its missiles, including those that may be able to hit the American mainland. The isolated and impoverished dictatorship has strived for decades to have the ability to strike the U.S. and its Asian allies, and the pace of its breakthroughs is already having far-reaching consequences for stability in the Pacific and beyond.

The nuclear advances were detailed in an official Japanese assessment and a Washington Post story that cited U.S. intelligence officials and a confidential Defense Intelligence Agency report. The U.S. now puts the North Korean arsenal at up to 60 nuclear weapons, more than double most assessments by independent experts, according to the Post’s reporting.

“North Korea had best not make any more threats to the United States,” said a stern-looking Trump, seated with his arms crossed and with his wife beside him. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

“He has been very threatening beyond a normal state. And as I said they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

The remarks appeared scripted, with Trump glancing at a paper in front of him. They evoked President Harry Truman’s announcement of the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, in which he warned of “a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

But it wasn’t clear what Trump, who is prone to hyperbole and bombast in far less grave situations, meant by the threat. White House officials did not elaborate.

The Trump administration considers North Korea to be America’s greatest national security threat and tensions have steadily escalated this year.

Pyongyang responded angrily to the U.N. Security Council’s adoption this weekend of new, tougher sanctions spearheaded by Washington . The sanctions followed groundbreaking long-range missile tests last month that showed the North could potentially reach the continental United States with its missiles. The newly revealed U.S. intelligence assessment indicates those missiles can carry nuclear warheads.

Denouncing the U.N. sanctions through state media, the North warned: “We will make the U.S. pay by a thousand-fold for all the heinous crimes it commits against the state and people of this country.”

For North Korea, having a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike America would be the ultimate guarantee against invasion by its superpower adversary.