Domestic issues took a backseat this week as the US president ratcheted up the fiery rhetoric with North Korea over its nuclear arsenal

It was a week in which Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia and domestic issues such as healthcare took a back seat, and probably the most intractable problem in the president’s foreign policy in-tray came to the fore, as Trump and North Korea competed to ratchet up the rhetoric over Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.

Last weekend

At the United Nations on Saturday, the UN security council voted unanimously to impose new sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests, cutting about a third of its export revenue. Trump said he was “very happy and impressed” with the vote, which saw both China and Russia side against Pyongyang in the wake of a test which experts said meant North Korea could now potentially reach the continental United States.

Vice-President Mike Pence has walked a tightrope few others in the White House have managed during the seven months of Trump’s presidency: keeping himself out of the jaws of the Russia inquiry – despite questions over what he knew about the fired national security adviser Michael Flynn – and out of the line of fire of his boss’s Twitter account.

So far, anyway. On Sunday, Pence was forced to push back forcefully against a New York Times article suggesting he is preparing for a presidential run in 2020, calling it “disgraceful”, “offensive” and “categorically false” in a statement many saw as largely directed towards one reader: the man currently on vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Sorry, my mistake – as Trump tweeted on Saturday: “This is not a vacation – meetings and calls!”

Monday

North Korea reacted badly to the UN sanctions, vowing to exact a “thousand-fold” revenge on the US and threatening to take “righteous action” in response. “There is no bigger mistake than the United States believing that its land is safe across the ocean,” the KCNA state news agency said.

Elsewhere, the Guardian revealed that two congressional staffers had travelled to London last month to contact Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer behind the infamous unconfirmed Trump dossier, on the orders of an aide to Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee and a close ally of the White House. The committee is investigating links between Trump and Russia and the revelation shone a light on the power struggle for control of the inquiry.

Tuesday



Tensions with North Korea continued to rise, with Japan warning that Pyongyang may now have the acquired the ability to miniaturise nuclear warheads – necessary if it wants to use its new intercontinental ballistic missiles for a nuclear strike on the US. That warning was followed by a story in the Washington Post stating that US intelligence agencies believed the same thing.

That development appeared to prompt a startlingly bellicose response from Trump, who told journalists at his Bedminster golf club: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

As experts warned that such bombastic threats could lead Kim Jong-un to overreact, North Korea said it was “carefully examining” a plan for a missile strike on the US Pacific territory of Guam – home to significant US naval and air bases – and could carry out a pre-emptive operation if the US showed signs of “provocation”.

In domestic news, at an event billed as a “major briefing” on the US opioid crisis, the president rebuffed a call from his commission on the subject to declare the situation a national emergency, and focused instead on harsher sentences and policing the Mexican border, without mentioning the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture many addictive painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin within the US. The health secretary, Tom Price, said the administration did not think it was necessary to declare an emergency “although all things are on the table for the president”. Critics claimed the president was stuck in a 1980s view of how to tackle drug abuse.

Wednesday

Defying Trump’s pledge to respond militarily to any more threats from North Korea, Pyongyang set out a detailed plan to attack Guam, with Gen Kim Rak-gyom, the head of the country’s strategic forces, outlining a demonstration launch of four intermediate-range missiles that would fly over Japan and then land in the sea around the US territory, “enveloping” the island.

The statement said the plan for this show of force would be ready by the middle of this month and then await orders from Kim. Trump’s comments, it said, were a “load of nonsense” and the president himself was “a guy bereft of reason … only absolute force can work on him”.

In Russia news, it emerged that the FBI used a search warrant to raid the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s home late last month – indicating agents are likely to have had probable cause to believe Manafort might not comply with a subpoena request to hand over all relevant records.

Thursday

Addressing reporters at Bedminster at two wide ranging Q&A sessions on Thursday, Trump warned Kim that if “he does something in Guam, it will be an event the likes of which nobody’s seen before, what will happen in North Korea” and mused that his “fire and fury” statement of earlier in the week may not have been tough enough. He would not rule out a pre-emptive strike, but also said he would consider negotiations.

The president also seemed to reverse course on the opioid epidemic, saying: “We’re going to draw it up and we’re going to make it a national emergency.” It was not immediately clear whether this would lead to a formal declaration, something that would empower the government to quickly expand access to in-patient treatment services and negotiate lower prices for the overdose reversal drug naloxone.

In stark contrast to his condemnation of US sanctions against Russia last week, Trump praised Russia’s sanctions against the US, saying it was good Vladimir Putin had ordered the US to cut 755 diplomatic staff in Russia because “we’re trying to cut down our payroll and as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll”.

While continuing to deny collusion with Russia over what US intelligence says was Moscow’s attempt to swing the election in his favour last year, Trump seemed to acknowledge that some of his staff might have broken rules regarding their meetings with Russians. “Did they do something wrong because they didn’t file the right document or whatever?” he asked. “Perhaps, you’d have to look at them, but I guarantee you this, there are probably a lot of people in Washington who did the same thing.” As for Manafort, the raid on his house was “pretty tough stuff”, the president said.

A study found that the uncertainty triggered by the Trump administration’s statements and actions regarding the future of Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms is triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many consumers. Trump made time to attack Mitch McConnell on the issue, suggesting the Republican leader in the Senate might have to step down if he failed to enact his legislative agenda. “Mitch, get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing,” he instructed the veteran senator later on Twitter, adding encouragingly: “You can do it!”

Friday

As the US and South Korea prepared for scheduled military exercises later this month – now fraught with tension – Trump kept the pressure up on Kim with a tweet on Friday morning threatening Pyongyang again, but indicating he wanted to avoid hostilities. “Military solutions are now fully in place,locked and loaded,should North Korea act unwisely,” he wrote. “Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”

But despite the gung-ho language there was no change in US deployments in the region or a change in the alert status of US forces. And it was reported on Friday that the Trump administration had reopened a channel of communication between American and North Korean diplomats at the United Nations.

Trump later said of Kim: “If he utters one threat, in the form of an overt threat ... or if he does anything with respect to Guam, or any place else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it and he will regret it fast.”

Worrying stuff. If you need cheering up, take a look at the listing on Airbnb for Trump’s childhood home, a bargain at $725 a night. One bedroom wall features the plaque: “In this bedroom, President Donald J Trump was likely conceived, by his parents, Fred and Mary Trump. The world has never been the same.”

Hard to disagree.

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