President Donald Trump on Sunday contradicted his chief diplomat Rex Tillerson once again, saying that Secretary of State is wasting his time trying to negotiate with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done,” wrote Trump on Twitter.
This is apparently another warning of U.S. military response to its escalating nuclear threat.
The warning came after Tillerson in Beijing, said that the administration is communicating with North Korea.
“We ask, Would you like to talk? We can talk to them, we do talk to them,” he said on Saturday.
This is another effort by Tillerson to smooth Trump’s rough edges on issues as U.S. policy toward NATO, Mexico and the Persian Gulf.
Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Tillerson understands that every American intelligence agency says there’s no amount of economic pressure that can be can put on North Korea to get them to stop this program because they view it as their survival.
“We’re moving to a place where we’re going to end up with a binary choice soon,” said Corker.
But Trump had a response to that. He tweeted “ Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.“
In the meantime everyone’s questioning for how long will Tillerson remain in office, and there are speculations that he is fed up, or that Trump wants him to leave.
“Humiliation for Tillerson, but worse, renders him useless. He’ll resign, today or after a brief face-saving interval,” said Dan Shapiro, former Obama administration ambassador and National Security Council official.
The State Department and the White House did not respond to queries on Trump’s comments, but Tillerson aides said that his remarks do not imply that there are important talks with Pyongyang.
According to Politico, this is a big humiliation for Tillerson and to make matters worse, everything is happening while Tillerson is in Beijing preparing for the president’s trip to China in November. Politico added that Trump is announcing that any negotiations with North Korea are worthless.
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