“I don’t think the president really modulates his language. Have you noticed him do that? I mean, he's been very clear about it,” H.R. McMaster said Thursday. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images McMaster: Trump 'will use whatever language he wants to use' with North Korea Trump’s willingness to colorfully threaten North Korea has sharply departed from the strategy adopted by his predecessors.

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster hinted Thursday that the president is unlikely to tone down his rhetoric toward North Korea on his upcoming trip to Asia, insisting that it is North Korea’s behavior, not Donald Trump’s heated words for Kim Jong Un, that have inflamed tensions.

“I don’t think the president really modulates his language. Have you noticed him do that? I mean, he's been very clear about it,” McMaster said Thursday at the White House press briefing. “I've been aware of the discussions about, ‘hey, is this inflammatory?’ And what's inflammatory is the North Korean regime and what they’re doing to threaten the world.”


Trump’s willingness to colorfully threaten North Korea has sharply departed from the strategy adopted by his predecessors from both parties, who sought mostly to isolate the Kim regime with sanctions and shrug off its frequent threats of nuclear war against the U.S.

Trump, by comparison, has responded to North Korean ballistic missiles tests by threatening the repressive communist state with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

The president’s willingness to engage in the type of threat typically employed by the Kim regime has prompted criticism from some that he has only heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but McMaster said Thursday the president’s clear declarations of U.S. resolve has only strengthened the nation’s position relative to North Korea.

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“The president will use whatever language he wants to use obviously and what the president has done is clarified in all of his discussions, his statements on North Korea our determination to ensure that North Korea is unable to threaten our allies and our partners and certainly the United States,” McMaster said. “I think there would be a grave danger if that regime didn't understand our resolve, the president's resolve to counter North Korean aggression. And the president’s made it very clear.”

