The North Korean "threat is upon us" and "is something President Trump is going to deal with in the first year," said Deputy National Security Adviser KT McFarland, who is expected to leave her post for an ambassadorship next week, in an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace on Sunday. She was speaking in response to Pyongyang's military parade and failed missile test this weekend, the latest attempts at a show of force by the Kim Jong Un regime.

Earlier this year, McFarland noted, the White House "directed the intelligence community" to "come up with things you haven't thought of before, think outside the box" for dealing with North Korea. The president was "pleased" with the results, she said, and that creative thinking enabled him to have a productive conversation about North Korea with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month.

Later in their conversation, Wallace pressed McFarland on whether it is "good for the president to shift so dramatically and so quickly on both China and Russia." "President Trump has now spent a lot of time with President Xi," McFarland replied, and has come "to understand what his priorities are. He shared what our priorities are." Trump has yet to have a comparable summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, she added, but "our relationship with Russia really depends on Russia. We would like to have a good relationship with Russia, but Russia has been doing some things of late, whether it's in Syria, whether it's with American democracy, that we take very seriously."