Earlier this week, presumably after his coddlers took too long to bring him one of his daily briefings of flattering bullshit, Donald Trump did his best impression of a president in an action movie and told North Korea that it would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it dared to threaten the United States. It was an absurdly overdramatic statement that would’ve been laughable if Trump weren’t a maniac threatening to kill a whole bunch of people, but Trump now thinks that he should’ve been even more absurdly overdramatic.
As reported by The Atlantic, Trump—who was once again speaking from one of his dumb golf courses in New Jersey—admitted that a lot of people were “questioning” his previous statement on North Korea because it might’ve been “too tough,” but he thinks that “maybe it wasn’t tough enough.” Naturally, this flies in the face of comments that his own chaotic administration has made, with Secretary Of State Rex Tillerson recently suggesting that Americans “should sleep well” because diplomatic sanctions on North Korea will ultimately be the most effective way to stop the escalating tensions.
One of the big reasons for this whole mess is probably that Trump seems to put a lot of effort into making people think that he’s strong and powerful, and it drives him crazy when someone isn’t sufficiently impressed by how great he is. Meanwhile, North Korea’s whole shtick is being dismissive of everything the United States does, so it makes sense that Trump’s go-to reaction is to lash out with loud and blusterous threats of violence. That’s assuming he doesn’t start dropping bombs just to spite everybody, though, which seems depressingly possible.