North Korea Scoffs at Trump’s ‘Nuclear Button’ Boast

SEOUL (AP) —

North Korea’s state-run media says that U.S. President Donald Trump’s boast that he has a “bigger and more powerful” nuclear button than leader Kim Jong Un is the “spasm of a lunatic.”
Rodong Sinmun, the ruling party’s newspaper, lashed out at Trump in a commentary on Tuesday

“The spasm of Trump in the new year reflects the desperate mental state of a loser who failed to check the vigorous advance of the army and people of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,)” the newspaper said. “He is making [a] bluff only to be diagnosed as a psychopath.”

The harsh tone is not unusual for North Korean media commentary, but Trump’s willingness to respond in kind — he has repeatedly called Kim “little rocket man” — is rare for an American leader, and has led to several fiery verbal barrages since he took office nearly a year ago.

Trump has more recently suggested he might be willing to meet with Kim, and reportedly told the Wall Street Journal the two “probably have a very good relationship.”
If so, however, the North’s propaganda machine doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

Rodong Sinmun also recently ran a story about the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which casts the president as a leader who doesn’t understand the weight of his office and whose competence is questioned by aides. Trump and other White House officials have blasted it as inaccurate. The title of the book comes from a Trump quote about North Korea. Last summer, Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” in an exchange of taunts with North Korea.

The book’s sales reflect “rapidly surging anti-Trump sentiments in the international community,” the article said. “The anti-Trump book is sweeping all over the world so Trump is being massively humiliated worldwide. The book’s popularity “foretells Trump’s political demise,” it concluded.

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