Trump Surrogates Could Hardly Contain Their Glee as They Threatened North Korea on the Sunday Shows
This Week on Squawking Heads, everyone was invited on a North Korean vacation except you; Martha Raddatz’s demeanor is as dry as the skin on Steve Bannon’s nose; and I spent 30 minutes at brunch yesterday planning escape routes from New York with one of my friends in the event of an attack on the city. And we were only about 40% kidding! 2017 is wild and not in a fun way!
Is this a game to you?
I understand that in a crisis, we want our authority figures to put forth an air of calm. I myself am an easily startled alarmist who is still dealing with the emotional turmoil of a rat running into my foot on the street two full weeks ago. I need to know someone else in this country has their shit on lock. I need to know that a rat would rue the day it touched their feet.
That said, there is a large gulf between calm competence and joking condescension.
This weekend, North Korea celebrated a national holiday known as the Day of the Sun with a large scale military parade and a showcase of new, enormous missiles. According to CNN, one of the numerous international news organizations on site for the parade, the soldiers during the parade chanted “We will die for you!” toward Kim Jong-un.
“Lots of concerning things coming out of that parade,” Colonel Steve Ganyard, a retired Marine Corps fighter pilot and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, wildly understated on This Week.
The next day, the North Koreans attempted to launch one of those missiles. It immediately blew up.
K.T. McFarland, current Deputy National Security Advisor and former Fox News commentator and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, National Security Advisor, assured the viewing public that the administration had North Korea handled by acting like it was all a silly little joke.
On Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace straight up asked McFarland if the United States had sabotaged the North Korean missile.
“Now, Chris, you know we can’t talk about secret intelligence,” McFarland said in a bizarrely girlish tone.
“I don’t have any particular comment on what happened with the North Korean missile. But it was a fizzle,” she continued with a small shrug of her shoulders and a twinkle in her eye. I swear to God it sounded like she was doing a straight to camera interview on a Bravo reality show talking about how her befuddled billionaire husband’s own little missile exploded upon launch.
