President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I for one feel super comfortable with an incompetent asshole with a severe inferiority complex leading the country and making threats about nuclear war.

Oh, wait. Maybe this is worrisome.

Perhaps those important liberal tears will extinguish the post-nuke flames.

 

Sounds like something Kim Jong-un would say.

 

Well, obviously Truman did more than just threaten. It has been reported Eisenhower PRIVATELY told the Chinese he was prepared to use nukes to end the Korean War. That's different from a public threat. It was clear to even a young boy (me) that Kennedy was prepared to go nuclear in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he never said so, and was also looking for and eventually finding a peaceful solution.
TSP's statement above is the problem. It does sound like that. And just as we as a country are inclined officially and unofficially to treat such rhetoric as bullshit from a dangerous crank, it is likely North Korea will react to Trump the same way.

 

Guess I'll leave the radio on CONELRAD tonight just in case.

 

Eventually there might be a "Who said it: Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump" game.

Perhaps we'll play it by candlelight.

 

Who said it: Donald Trump or North Korea?

 

So you're saying this is not only a test of the EBS.

 

That's the problem. Ike said it in private. Trump said it in public and will likely retweet it, just because he has small hands.

 

I think my point for that was there is plenty to be worried about Trump's statement without resorting to making sweeping historical declarations. It A) sets up the inevitable "but a Democrat!!!eleventy!!!" and 2) skews just how terrifying that statement is in context of today.

 

We'll see what happens, but Mark Bowden made the point in the Atlantic that Kim Jong-un has absolutely zero to gain by initiating an attack against the United States or South Korea. While chances are pretty high that his own attack would be unsuccessful, and certainly he couldn't do much other than temporarily wobble the Western world and/or the U.S., he, his nation, and everything he has worked to build would cease to exist within an hour or two.