North Korean Official Says Attack on U.S. Mainland Is ‘Inevitable’

The high–stakes bluster and bellicosity exchanged between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leaders lately have brought the ongoing conflict to a potential tipping point that is closer than ever to a horrendous war.

At a Friday night rally in Alabama, Trump again referred to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as “little rocket man.” Trump first resorted to that childish habit of name–calling to criticize Kim in a tweet last week.

Trump repeated the epithet during a disgraceful speech before the U.N. General Assembly earlier this week. Before that speech, senior aides had warned Trump not to personally attack the North Korean leader, according to the Los Angeles Times, because “insulting the young despot in such a prominent venue could irreparably escalate tensions and shut off any chance for negotiations to defuse the nuclear crisis.”

Kim responded on Friday, calling Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” or old, senile person.

“A frightened dog barks louder,” Kim added.

On Saturday, U.S. bombers and fighter jets flew to the farthest point north of the Demilitarized Zone of any U.S. mission this century. A Defense Department spokesman said the mission was conducted because North Korea’s weapons program is a “grave threat.”

Then, a North Korean official speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York upped the ante again in the dangerous showdown by saying that a North Korean attack on the U.S. mainland is “inevitable.”

In his speech, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said Trump had “turned the White House into a noisy marketing place,” and that he had “tried to turn the U.N. arena into a gangsters’ nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day.”

Ri added (emphasis mine):

“The absurd reality that the person like Trump, a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacence, the person who is chastised even by American people as ‘commander in grief,’ ‘Lying King,’ ‘president evil,’ is holding the seat of the U.S. presidency, and the dangerous reality that the gambler who grew old using threats, frauds, and all other schemes to acquire a patch of land holds the nuclear button. These are what constitute the gravest threat to the international peace and security today.

Due to his lacking of basic common knowledge and proper sentiment, he tries to insult the supreme dignity of my country by referring it to a rocket. By doing so, however, he committed an irreversible mistake of making our rockets visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.

None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission. In case innocent lives of the U.S. are harmed because of this suicide attack, Trump will be held totally responsible.”