President Trump 'would not be happy' if North Korea tested another nuclear weapon
In an interview with Face the Nation on CBS airing Sunday, President Trump said, "I don't know. I mean, we'll see," when asked if another nuclear test by North Korea would prompt him to choose military intervention against Pyongyang. "I would not be happy," Trump said of a hypothetical test, "If he does a nuclear test I would not be happy. And I can tell you also that the president of China, who is a very respected man, won't be happy either."
Trump was speaking in response to Saturday's failed missile test, in which North Korea unsuccessfully fired a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan. Pressed with the same question while touring a factory in Pennsylvania Saturday, Trump was similarly vague. "You'll soon find out, won't you?" he said. "You'll soon find out."
Also on Saturday, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reaffirmed the United States' commitment to pay for South Korea's THAAD missile defense system, comments that apparently contradict President Trump's recent suggestion that Seoul should foot the $1 billion bill.
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Watch Trump's Face the Nation comments in context below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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