who frankly responds to taunts with taunts. we talked about fire and fury when talking about north korea previously, and refer to kim jong-un as rocket man. and let s not forget what he said on his asia trip, saying why would kim jong-un insult me by calling me old man, i would never call him short and fat. so this is clearly not a president afraid of engaging with kim jong-un. recently we ve heard secretary of state rex tillerson suggest maybe talks with north korea could be productive, maybe negotiatings could be productive. and the president seems to continue to cut him off at the knees on this. so it will be interesting to see how those folks in this administration in charge of the diplomacy side of this grapple with the president s latest tweet, jake. thank you so much. laura, let me ask you. so the president saying my
by calling me old man, i would never call him short and fat. so this is clearly a president not above engaging in back and forth insults with kim jong-un. this is interesting to watch the president engage in taunts like this. recently we ve heard secretary of state rex tillerson suggest maybe talks with north korea could be productive, maybe negotiations could be productive. and the president seems to continue to cut him off at the knees on this. so it will be interesting to see how those folks in this administration in charge of the diplomacy side of this grapple with the president s latest tweet, jake. thank you so much. laura, let me ask you. so the president saying my button works as opposed to yours, and as a national former national security official, does that concern you that kim jong-un s response is going to be you know what, mine works too and let me show you and there ll be some sort of demonstration? i think that we should assume
democrats like me and republicans have to take responsibility for the fact that president clinton and george w. bush these kinds of things were tried and they failed. the north koreans have been developing nuclear weapons since the 1990s. they ve gotten good at it pretty recently and they now have missile technology and it s dangerous. it s not clear what they can do. they have 40,000 artillery tubes aimed at seoul which is a city about the size of new york, only much denser and in seoul there are tens of thousands of americans and it is an unbelievably dangerous situation and it is not clear they can take out their nuclear weapons without causing gargantuan, massive loss of life and let me point out one other thing on the diplomacy side. we need more than ever now, the south koreans to be good allies of ours and it is insane for the
being a carnival barker may help you whip up electoral votes, it does nothing to prepare someone to be an effective demacommanded chief. he did not serve, it never hurts to remind people of that. back to the point that joe was making about the diplomacy side being a mess, the state department has been described as a hot mess. that is in the washington post. you also have the fact that rex tillerson, seen by many people as ineffective. he gets one upped by jared kushner of all people. he did meet with diplomats, and there was a press conference after these direct talks with the north korean diplomat. this is one quote from that. they said do not violate the
sitting down at the table and trading with north korea, but that the chinese are at the table, too. the chinese like to say, you guys all work it out. it s time for them to participate, not just on the pressure side, but on the diplomacy side as well. i think if we tried something like that, who knows if it would work because north korea is the land of lousy options, but it would give us a better chance. as we ve seen with his tweets and other public comments, donald trump likes to cajole pressure, influence with somewhat incendiary public comment. based on your own dealings with china and sometimes sensitive negotiations, is that something that china responds to? i think china responds best to predictable strength. telling them what the united states is going to do and then following through and doing it. so, when you are unpredictable, when you swerve from one extreme to the other, as trump has done repeatedly over the last six months, not only do the chinese not know what to mak