FOREIGN POLICY/MILITARY/NORTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump downplayed the possibility of military action against North Korea on Thursday, saying such an event is neither inevitable nor preferable.
‘Military action would certainly be an option,’ he said during a White House news conference, but added later: ‘It would be great if something else could be worked out.’
Trump said attempts at diplomacy with Pyongyang had failed over the past decades. But he insisted that military action wouldn’t be his first choice…
Trump said Wednesday that military action is not his ‘first choice’ to address North Korea’s ongoing moves to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, hours after he spoke by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping…
Trump said that he believed he and Xi are on the same page following what he described as a ‘very, very frank and very strong phone call.’
‘We will not be putting up with what’s happening in North Korea. I believe that President Xi agrees with me 100%,’ Trump said from the White House’s South Lawn as he prepared to board Marine One.”
-Kevin Liptak, “Trump: ‘It would be great’ if North Korea could be solved without military action,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, Sept. 7, 2017 02:57pm