TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined Friday [10-6-17] to offer any clarity into what President Donald Trump meant a day earlier when he cryptically remarked at a meeting with military officials that the gathering could be ‘the calm before the storm.’…
Trump made his comment Thursday evening flanked by uniformed military officials at a moment of particular international stress. North Korea has ramped up its nuclear program in recent months, test-firing ballistic missiles over Japan and detonating its most powerful nuclear device to date. The president has pointedly refused to take a military option off the table in his pledge to keep North Korea from obtaining a nuclear missile capable of striking the continental U.S.
Tensions elsewhere around the world have ramped up as well, with Trump committing U.S. troops to Afghanistan and U.S. military advisers still aiding Iraqi forces in their campaign against the Islamic State. Relations between the U.S. and Iran appear to have becoming increasingly strained as well, with Trump weighing whether or not to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.”
-Louis Nelson, “White House won’t clarify what Trump meant by ‘the calm before the storm’,” Politico, Oct. 6, 2017 03:30pm