OPINION | Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those held by Sarah Palin.
President Donald Trump did not mince his words when he cautioned North Korea Wednesday morning: “Do not underestimate us. And do not try us.”
The president is three days into his Pacific tour, having started in Japan, where he is meeting with regional powers, discussing North Korea’s reckless aggression.
As the country edges closer to fulfilling their ambitions of adding a nuclear weapon to their arsenal, Trump has sought to prevent such a weapon from being developed.
Trump said developing a nuke puts North Korea in “grave danger,” per AP News:
“The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger,” Trump told an audience of South Korean lawmakers, calling on all nations to join forces “to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea.”
“The world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens with nuclear devastation,” he said.
Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un was also warned that his U.S. counterpart is unlike anyone the country has dealt with before:
Trump said the U.S. will not allow its cities to be threatened with destruction, and said that, while America “does not seek conflict or confrontation,” it will not run from it, either.
“The regime has interpreted America’s past restraint as weakness. This would be a fatal miscalculation?,” Trump said. “This is a very different administration than the United States has had in the past.”
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Yesterday, Trump may have offered the country a diplomatic opportunity to settle hostilities:
On Tuesday, Trump’s first day on the Korean Peninsula, he had signaled a willingness to negotiate as he urged North Korea to “come to the table” and “make a deal” over its nuclear weapons program.
He also said he’d seen “a lot of progress” in dealing with Pyongyang, though he stopped short of saying whether he wanted direct talks.
“It makes sense for North Korea to come to the table and make a deal that is good for the people of North Korea and for the world,” Trump said at a news conference with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in.
CNN reports the North Korean government is uninterested in such an arrangement:
Though the American leader’s tone was more subdued — and he proposed what some perceived as a conditional olive branch — officials in Pyongyang authorized to speak for the government told CNN when it comes to Trump, “we don’t care about what that mad dog may utter because we’ve already heard enough.”“The United States is threatening us with nuclear aircraft carriers and strategic bombers. They are challenging us with with the most vicious and demeaning provocations but we will counter those threats by bolstering the power of justice in order to take out the root cause of aggression and war,” the officials said.