Officials Prepped for North Korean Nuclear Attack as Trump Stirred Tension, Book Says

Donald Trump has long praised Kim Jong-un, but he spent the first part of his presidency publicly prodding and threatening the murderous North Korean dictator. The tension between the two strongmen was so concerning to top security officials, a new book alleges, that they held multiple meetings to prepare for a North Korean nuclear attack against the United States.

“You all need to prepare like we’re going to war,” former Defense Secretary James Mattis said to former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, according to Taylor’s new book Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, an excerpt of which was obtained by Politico.

The United States and North Korea were at a standoff in 2017, with the latter conducting a series of missile tests and the former readying itself near the Korean Peninsula. North Korea threatened to attack in retaliation. Trump responded by warning in August that North Korea better stop making such threats, as they would “be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” He described Kim as “Rocket Man … on a suicide mission” while speaking at the United Nations a month later, adding that the U.S. was prepared to “totally destroyed North Korea.”

Taylor writes that Homeland Security brass met on multiple occasions to discuss the escalating tension, and that experts laid “various scenarios of a nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland, dusted off response plans, and outlined best-case scenarios which nevertheless sounded horrifically grim.”

Politico confirmed such meetings took place with Chris Krebs, another former Homeland Security official.

“In the national security world, anything having to do with nuclear weapons is handled with extreme sensitivity — well planned, carefully scripted — yet we didn’t know what Trump might say at any given moment,” Taylor explains in his new book, adding that with his “fire and fury” comments Trump “almost seemed to welcome a nuclear conflict, which terrified us.”

Taylor wrote an infamous, then-anonymous op-ed for The New York Times a year after Trump started prodding Kim, describing himself as part of the “resistance inside the Trump administration” that is working to “thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

Trump’s relationship with Kim may have gotten off to a sketchy start, but he has since gone out of his way to laud the North Korean leader. They met in Singapore in 2018, and Trump traveled to North Korea a year later. Trump said ahead of that meeting that they “fell in love.” Trump continued to praise Kim after leaving office. “The ones I did best with were the tyrants,” Trump said at an event in Dec. 2021, citing Kim. “For whatever reason, I got along great with them.”

The Washington Post reported weeks later that the National Archives had seized “love letters” from Kim that Trump had been hoarding at Mar-a-Lago in an apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act. Trump has since been indicted on federal charges related to the material he took to South Florida.

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