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North Korea scoffs at Trump’s ‘nuclear button’ tweet

In the seemingly endless exchange of taunts, North Korea antagonizes Trump, who belittles Kim Jong Un. 

By: AP

North Korea’s state-run media say President Donald Trump’s tweet about having a bigger nuclear button than leader Kim Jong Un’s is the “spasm of a lunatic.”

Rodong Sinmun, the ruling party newspaper, lashed out at Trump in a commentary on Tuesday that took issue with the US commander in chief’s Jan. 3 tweet that “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

A summary of the commentary by North Korea’s official news agency described the tweet as “the spasm of a lunatic.”

“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,” the Rodong Sinmun commentary said, using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “He is making (a) bluff only to be diagnosed as a psychopath.”

That tone is not uncommon for the North Korean media.

Trump’s controversial “nuclear button” tweet was in response to Kim’s New Year’s Day warning that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is a real threat and that he has a nuclear launch button on his desk at all times.

‘Rapidly surging anti-Trump sentiments’

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 the North, which claimed it was examining plans to launch missiles toward the American territory of Guam.

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.