President Trump is a “mentally deranged person full of megalomania” on a “suicide mission” that boosts the chance of a North Korean missile attack on the United States, the hermit kingdom’s foreign minister said Saturday.
By labeling North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un “Rocket Man” during his United Nations speech last week, Trump made “our rocket’s visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more,” Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told the UN General Assembly.
“Trump will be held totally responsible” if Americans are hurt, Ri said.
Last week, Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if it provoked the United States.
“Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself,” the president stated in a General Assembly address Tuesday.
Ri implied that Trump chose his words poorly, charging that it’s Trump who poses “the gravest threat to international peace and security today.”
Ri added: “Trump might not be aware what is uttered from his mouth.”
North Korea has rattled the world with repeated nuclear-missile testing, escalating tensions by successfully firing a missile over Japan last month and more recently, threatening to test a hydrogen bomb.
On Friday, Ri suggested that North Korea would test-fire an H-bomb in the Pacific in the first open-air nuke test in decades.
The country’s arsenal is a “war deterrent” against the United States, Ri claimed.
Ri slammed Trump as “lacking of basic common knowledge and proper sentiment” and said the American president “tried to insult the supreme dignity of my country by referring it to a rocket.”
Trump has also brought down the United Nations by turning it into a “gangsters’ nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day,” Ri said.
Before Ri took the UN podium, US B-1B bombers and F-15C Eagle fighter escorts flew in international airspace east of North Korea.
The B-1Bs came from Guam, and the F-15Cs flew from Okinawa, Japan. The operation was meant to reflect the seriousness with which the US takes the North’s “reckless behavior,” the Pentagon said.
The military planes’ flight was a “demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat.”
It was the furthest north of the Demilitarized Zone any US aircraft have flown.
“North Korea’s weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community,” the Pentagon statement said. “We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies.”