Trump warning in Korea

Trump tells North Korea: 'Do not try us'

Standing near the front line of the world's tensest standoff, President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a direct and personal warning to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, declaring during his first major speech in Asia that continued nuclear provocation could result in the communist nation's obliteration.

"The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger," Trump said during an address at South Korea's National Assembly in Seoul. 

"Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face."

In a bruising insult of the repressive regime founded by Kim Il-sung in the middle of last century and governed in his image ever since, Trump diminished the kingdom now ruled by his grandson.

"North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned," he said. "It is a hell that no person deserves."

It was a frank and cutting personal insult directed at the man who Trump has previously derided as "rocket man." 

He avoided that term on Wednesday, but was unsparing in his description of a failed state where the majority of citizens live in misery.

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"That would be a fatal miscalculation," he said of North Korean threats to strike the US and its allies.

"This a very different administration than the United States has had in the past. Do not underestimate us. And do not try us."

Trump reiterated that point on Twitter Wednesday evening: "NoKo has interpreted America's past restraint as weakness. This would be a fatal miscalculation. Do not underestimate us. AND DO NOT TRY US," he tweeted.

Mattis and others have said the US will not accept a nuclear armed North Korea.

The military checked in the other day with the view that it would require a ground invasion to root out the infrastructure of North Korea's nuclear capability.

My suspicion is that The Duce and his military advisors have already decided on war in case North Korea doesn't back down.

We'll see.