Lauren Baker
Donald Trump continues to unleash his inflammatory rhetoric on Twitter, this time attacking one of his own cabinet members. On Oct. 1, Trump released two tweets undermining Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s efforts to negotiate with North Korea over the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons: “‘I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man … ”
He continued in the second Tweet, ” … Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!” A little later in the day, Trump tweeted a third time: “Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.”
Trump needs to stop using Twitter to address complex foreign affairs. His tweets sound like a call to nuclear war to any rational person, and Kim Jong Un has not historically been the most rational person. Trump has made it no secret that he would like to go to war with North Korea, continuously making incendiary remarks such as promising to unleash “fire and fury” on the country.
These tweets are all of his past threats coming to a head in an almost direct call to war. And what better a forum to incite nuclear war with than Twitter? There is truly not a more Presidential way to address such a grave issue than in a 140 character, grammatically incorrect sentence on an app used predominantly for memes.
We elected Trump to be the commander-in-chief of our armed forces, and the fact that he is lashing out at a country that we are on the brink of nuclear war with over Twitter should be a sick joke. This is our unfortunate reality; Trump is not concerned about what is best for the American people and the world as a whole, but instead thinks only about what he can do to look like an alpha-male, consequently getting into a potentially deadly pissing contest with Kim Jong-un.
Not only is Trump exhibiting his completely unprofessional behavior in foreign relations, but also with the members of his own cabinet. In the tweets quoted above, he passively-aggressively undermines Rex Tillerson’s opinion on how the situation with North Korea should be handled.
Beyond the offense to Tillerson, Trump, a man with little interest in the intricacies of foreign affairs or willingness to learn more, completely brushed off the opinion of the man he hired to help him make up for his own deficit in experience.
Since Trump first announced that he would be running for president, he has been heralded by his supporters for being an outsider undeniably different than other politicians. However, the very attributes his own supporters elected him for will be his downfall.
If he continues ignore the members of his cabinet — people with experience who have the potential to guide him in the right direction — Trump’s idiotic pride won’t allow for him to take the advice he so desperately needs. In the process, America could Tweet its way into nuclear war.