FOREIGN POLICY/NORTH KOREA/REX TILLERSON/STATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The White House said Monday [10-2-17] that President Donald Trump has confidence in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, after saying a day earlier that the chief diplomat was ‘wasting his time’ by trying to negotiate with North Korea.
Mr. Tillerson disclosed over the weekend that the U.S. has had direct contact with Pyongyang and was trying to ascertain whether North Korean leaders want to hold talks on their nuclear program. His statements, during a trip to Beijing to meet Chinese leaders, prompted Mr. Trump to tell Mr. Tillerson in a Twitter message that he should save his energy, and ‘we’ll do what has to be done.’
The apparent disagreement prompted charges that the White House and State Department were at odds over a critical foreign policy issue, and that Mr. Trump had undercut his chief diplomat…
Mr. Tillerson on Saturday said the U.S. has ‘a couple, three,’ channels to communicate with North Korea. State Department officials said that he wasn’t suggesting that the U.S. is conducting active negotiations with North Korea, but to state that the U.S. has a way to communicate with Pyongyang.”
–Felicia Schwartz and Louise Radnofsky, “Trump Says ‘Not The Time to Talk’ With North Korea,” The Wall Street Journal online, Oct. 2, 2017 05:57pm