It’s just the beginning of August and sh*t has gotten very real.
The President is meant to be on vacation, except it’s not really a vacation – it’s working.
He’s at one of his golf courses, where he keeps tweeting and he is “very busy doing lots of meetings and calls”. As Seth Meyers puts it, that’s exactly how a small child would describe what an adult does in an office #briefcase.
In a press conference that was meant to be about the opioid crisis, Trump suddenly veered wildly off-script and threatened to nuke North Korea and kill us all.
The dark humour about the leader of the free world being an erratic toddler with access to the nuclear codes, until now, seemed almost as far-fetched as a man who brags about grabbing women by the pussy becoming President.
And here we are.
Like our co-founder, Mia Freedman does every time she’s freaking out, she picked up the phone to call her podcast co-host, Amelia Lester.
You can listen to the full conversation with Mia and Amelia on Tell Me It’s Going To Be OK, right here. (Post continues after audio.)
Mia: Amelia, hi. Tell me it’s going to be ok. Seriously, tell me can it be ok because it feels like it’s not.
Amelia: It feels like it’s not. I remember after Trump was elected, I’ve had this gnawing sense of anxiety. The best analogy is that it feels like the whole world is locked in a room with a toddler who has a gun. The toddler could not let off the gun. The toddler could not get around to it, they may not figure out how to do it. Or, the toddler could just pick up the gun and fire it.
It feels like that analogy is more relevant than ever. Every morning, we wake up and I am braced to see what he has said. Waking up two days ago to see that he has said things that no other U.S. President has ever said, which is reminiscent of how dictators just like Kim Jong-un speak, was pretty jarring.
I don’t know if it’s going to be OK.
Mia: Can you take us back to what’s been happening with North Korea, in the last few months?
Amelia: North Korea has been a simmering issue for 50 years or so now.
Intelligence reports suggest that North Koreans have figured out how to not only build nuclear weapons, but also to miniaturise them. The reason why that’s key is because it means they can travel over long distances on missiles.
Mia: Why do you they want to blow people up? Why do they want to hit America with a nuclear weapon?
Amelia: One constant that comes through in reports regarding North Korea, is that Kim Jong-un is not crazy. Anyone who tells you he is, they don’t know what they’re talking about. He is a rational actor in all of this.
Mia: Just so I understand, what is Kim Jong-un’s end game? Who are his enemies?
Amelia: He wants to stay in power for as long as possible. He’s sensible enough to know that if he moves to attack the U.S. or any of the U.S. allies in the region, most notably South Korea and Japan, then his entire country would be decimated.
Unfortunately, North Korea reaching a tipping point on science, where they have miniaturised nuclear weapon, just happens to occur when Donald Trump is President.
Mia: Does he have the nuclear codes in his fingers? Can he literally wake up in the morning, be sh*tty and nuke North Korea.
Amelia: Yes, the nuclear codes set-up is designed for maximum speed. It's not designed for debate. It's not designed for checks and balances. The nuclear codes are in his possession at all times.
There's a man who walks behind him with a briefcase, which has the nuclear codes in the briefcase. If Donald Trump wants to launch a nuclear strike, it goes up the military chain of command. Theoretically, someone higher up could not allow it. But the military is not going to ignore the orders of their commander-in-chief.
The system is designed so that when Donald Trump says that he wants to launch a nuclear weapon, then a nuclear weapon gets launched extremely quickly. We're talking minutes not hours.
Mia: Who is involved in that decision, between him launching a nuclear attack, deciding to and actually doing it?
Amelia: There are members of the military involved but Donald Trump is the commander-in-chief.
He's not just a politician. He is the head of the American military. Yes, it goes through various members of the military in order to actually enact his orders, but he has the final say.
Mia: Can they refuse him?
Amelia: The military is not there to question but obey orders from their commander-in-chief. That's what Donald Trump's advisers are there for.
Mia: Is there any good news here, at all?
Amelia: Here are a couple of ways to look on the bright side.
Kim Jong-un is a rational actor. He does not want his entire country decimated in a matter of minutes. It's very unlikely that he would want that.
Amelia: I read a funny story yesterday from a professor at Dartmouth University, and he’s an expert on nuclear proliferation.
His advice to everyone on Twitter was get off Twitter, go and have a nice dinner because at least if a nuclear holocaust happens, you will have had some good food.
It's hard not to look at Trump and Kim Jong-un and feel angry that there are these men, who bring their ego to the table instead of trying to solve problems for the entire world. That's why we end up not being able to sleep at night.
Mia: If I wasn't already angry enough at Donald Trump. If only Hillary was in the White House we would not be having this conversation, or it would be a very different conversation.
Amelia: One thing the Hillary Clinton would never say is, "I'm going to unleash fire and fury unlike what the world has never seen.” She probably would have tested it in a focus group and said something, “I will be irritated.”
I wish it were more positive but I actually do think it's going to be OK. I'm much more worried about Trump than I am about Kim Jong-un.
Trump is actually crazy.
Mia: Look our only hope is that he's just going to keel over. Alright. Thank you, my friend. We will speak soon. Stay safe.
You can listen Tell Me It's Going To Be Ok on iTunes or on the Mamamia Podcast app. You can like our Facebook here, for all the latest news on Donald Trump and pop culture you love.
Top Comments
Why can't the US launch a preemptive strike? If NK shows signs of preparing their missiles with nuclear warheads, can the US shoot? If the liquid fuelled missiles are being fuelled for launch, can they shoot? Can they shoot if the missile is launched but still in NK airspace? If the NKs take actions to prepare for nuclear missile release, I very much hope the US strikes first and saves tens of thousands of lives in South Korea, Japan, Guam, Hawaii or any other target.
China won't retaliate as they won't swap Shanghai for Pyongyang anymore than American would have swapped Boston for Berlin. If China launched against the US it would cause terrible damage to the United States but nothing like what the US would do to them in retaliation. China isn't that dumb.
Even a conventional war between China and the US would see China lose. 85% of their oil comes out of the Middle East, their fresh water supplies are from Tibet and a few large dams there and almost half of China's food, including 20% from the US and Canada, arrives by sea. The US Navy merely needs to establish a blockade from Japan to Taiwan to Singapore and China dies. China knows this as well.
Guam is a bit too close to us for my liking.
So, what is this is a feint by NK and they will actually shoot elsewhere, like Northern Aus US military bases?
It's a change from the "dog strategy". Dogs chase cars all the time but what do if they caught one? Up til now it's been, OK NK, you have a little nuke, now what's your next move?
Launching a missile at Guam, regardless if it hits, regardless if the US shoots it down en route would achieve exactly what besides the end of North Korea?
Things have changed though, Trump is more Kennedy or Reagan in drawing the nuclear line. He could easily (and possibly is) set China up by saying any nuclear launch from NK will be treated as an attack from China, just as Kennedy declared to the Soviets with Cuba.
NK is China's angry dog, China needs to bring its dog to heal.