WASHINGTON—In 2012, when Donald Trump was a celebrity businessman, he wrote on Twitter: “Price of corn has jumped over 50%. This will cause a jump in food prices perhaps beyond what we've ever seen.”

Four years later, when he was running for president, he told the New York Times that China was building, in the South China Sea, “a military fortress the likes of which perhaps the world has not seen.”

The expression popped out of his mouth again after he won the election. In December, Trump told supporters that they had created “a grassroots movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

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And there it was again when Trump was ad-libbing about the opioid addiction crisis on Tuesday afternoon. He claimed that he was “very, very strong on our southern border — and I would say the likes of which this country certainly has never seen.”

Until that point, the president’s pet phrase was unremarkable. It was mere hyperbole — mere Trump. This was a man who never used “big” when “huge” could do. This was just how the man spoke.

Experts believe Kim Jong Un is rational, not mad, and that he wants to avoid nuclear war. But they have long feared that Kim might be provoked by loose Trump language into miscalculating, launching a strike because he thought Trump meant precisely what he said. (Wong Maye-E, Pablo Martinez Mons / The Associated Press File Photos)

And then, minutes after his remarks on opioids, the phrase suddenly became a threat of nuclear war.

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A reporter asked him if he had any response to the news, revealed by the Washington Post on Tuesday, that U.S. intelligence believes North Korea has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead.

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“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,” Trump responded, stern, at his golf club in New Jersey. “He has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

Without the “like the world has never seen,” Trump’s remarks about “fire and fury” could conceivably have been taken to mean any kind of military strike. With the “like the world has never seen,” the comments are an unmistakable threat of nuclear annihilation.

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Trump says North Korea will be met with ‘fire and the fury like the world has never seen’ if it doesn’t stop threatening the U.S.

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North Korea threatens retaliation against the U.S. after UN imposes tough sanctions

It is possible that Trump intended to make just such a nuclear threat. He has, after all, promised to eradicate North Korea’s nuclear threat “one way or the other.”

But it is also possible that the president bumbled into the threat because he did not understand the ramifications of a favourite phrase he had in his head.

“I'm guessing that this talking point didn't come through the rigorous interagency process,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, communications director in the Obama administration.

Kim Jong Un is now confronted with the dilemma that has vexed American voters and lawmakers alike: whether or not to take Trump literally.

“I don’t pay much attention anymore to what the president says because there’s no point in it,” Sen. John McCain told an Arizona radio station while criticizing Trump’s comments. “It’s not terrible what he said, but it’s kind of the classic Trump in that he overstates things.”

Trump on Tuesday vowed to launch “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea does not stop threatening the U.S. He made the alarming comments from the unusual setting of his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. — the plaques on the wall list holes in one made at the club. (AL DRAGO/ The New York Times)

Experts believe Kim is rational, not mad, and that he wants to avoid nuclear war. But they have long feared that Kim might be provoked by loose Trump language into miscalculating, launching a strike because he thought Trump meant precisely what he said.

“I don’t think (Trump is) brave enough to start a war with the North Koreans. But he’s dumb enough to talk like he might. And the fear I have is he’ll say something that the North Koreans will interpret as a sign that an attack is coming, and they’ll overreact,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told the Star in April.

As usual, there is an old Trump tweet that can be read as foretelling the current situation.

“Be prepared, there is a small chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III,” he wrote in 2013.