North Korean officials told CNN on Wednesday that they did “not care” about President Donald Trump’s warnings against them, while Pyongyang’s state media called for a coup against him.
“We don’t care about what that mad dog may utter because we’ve already heard enough,” unnamed “officials in Pyongyang authorized to speak for the government” told the American outlet.
In the statement, CNN reports the officials said they would “counter” any American “threats by bolstering the power of justice in order to take out the root cause of aggression and war.”
The North Korean regime has responded to Trump with feigned apathy and threats of nuclear annihilation in equal measure. Following his electoral victory a year ago, North Korean official Kim Yong Ho said in a statement, “we do not care.” Yet North Korea’s state propaganda outlets—the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Rodong Sinmun, and others—have consistently referred to Trump as an alarming threat to their status quo.
In October, for example, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper called Trump an “old rabid dog” and “Hitler in the 21st century” and suggested Trump should be “eliminated.”
The state outlet Uriminzokkiri published an article on Wednesday echoing the sentiment and repeating the “old man” insult, stating that the main newspaper of North Korea’s Cabinet, Minju Choson, “Wednesday says in a commentary such movement in the U.S. shows that Americans are realizing that their country’s security is endangered due to Trump’s hostile policy towards the DPRK.”
“The world is undergoing unprecedented throes because of Trump, a notorious ‘political heretic,'” the Minju Choson reportedly proclaimed. “It is entirely the U.S. responsibility to control such serious situation. The U.S. must oust the lunatic old man from power and withdraw the hostile policy towards the DPRK at once in order to get rid of the abyss of doom.”
North Korea’s repeated insults at Trump for his allegedly advanced age appear to be a rebuttal to Trump’s treatment of Kim, 33, as an immature leader, particularly his repeated references to Kim as “Little Rocket Man.”
Trump has implied that world peace requires the eradication of the Kim regime in its entirety. In his speech Tuesday, President Trump warned communist dictator Kim Jong-in that “the weapons that you are acquiring, they are putting you in grave danger. North Korea is not the paradise that your grandfather envisioned, it is the hell that no person deserves.”
Trump went on to tell Kim, “Do not underestimate us and do not try us” and described North Korea as a “prison state, a nuclear nightmare, and a cult.”
The speech followed multiple meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, after which the two leaders announced that they would be working on “tremendous” deals for Seoul to purchase advanced American military technology.
“We have the greatest military equipment in the world and South Korea will be ordering billions of dollars of that equipment,” Trump promised.
North Korean state media has responded with more vitriol against Trump. “No one can predict when the lunatic old man of the White House, lost to senses, will start a nuclear war against the DPRK,” an article in government-owned website Uriminzokkiri read on Wednesday.
“No matter what storm and stress and ordeals the army and people of the DPRK may face, they will pave a broad avenue to the independent development and prosperity, holding fast to the nuclear deterrent of justice,” the article warned. “The more serious the situation may become and the worse challenge and ordeals lie before us, we will conclude the showdown with the U.S. to victory in the offensive spirit.”
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