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little. boy i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and welcome to the big picture north korea better get their act together they will be met with fury things will happen to them like they never thought possible

but they're going to be trouble like few days ever have been in trouble in this world the standoff between north korea in the united states continued today with donald trump intensifying his threats towards beyond young trumps comments came after the north korean government unveiled a plan to fire missiles at a wall according to north korean state news those missiles will fly over japan before landing about twenty five miles off shore of the u.s. small u.s. territory so are we now. on the brink of nuclear war joining me now is investigative journalist tim shorrock tim spent part of his youth in south korea writes about u.s. korea relations for the nation and the korea center for investigative reporting tim welcome to the program thank you very much great to have you with us so how seriously should we be taking these dueling rhetorical flame throwing attempts that seem to be coming out of. out of cricket north korea and washington d.c.

specifically trump and right i mean we should be taking them very seriously and this is this is the most dangerous escalation i've ever seen in korea perhaps since you know the north koreans. seized the you know years ago in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight the spy ship that they captured you know i mean but this is more even more intense and that i think i think the rhetoric especially from the from donald trump is just incredibly dangerous and scary well i mean he seems to be threatening them with you know nuclear would nuclear weapons and this is this is quite an escalation i mean when when harry truman you know used similar languages and pointed out that this you know the more use of force the world has ever seen was very similar to what truman was saying you know when he was threatening japan with the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki in and but you know by that time you

know japan had japan they didn't you know it attacked the united states and invaded asia head in slaves half of korea in china and you know and killed thousands and thousands of americans in a war and we're not at war and now here they are threatening nuclear weapons well it seems pretty pretty dangerous and truman state it was after hiroshima had been bombed and before now he's basically saying we've done this to you we can do it to you again stop this war right now and they said no we're going to keep the war going and boom off it went which is sort of you know high. don't say it if you don't intend to do it and if you do say you're going to do it do it which is you know pretty bizarre coming out of the president of the united states i mean kill him has been talking like this is father talk like this is grandfather talk like this this is nothing new you know the tinpot dictators in little countries tend to go on jeremiah ads against the big guy but when the big guy says i'll nuke you if

you keep talking like that he was threatening and he said if south korea oeuvre north korea keeps the rattling. that seems unprecedented to me i read in zoom in korea website about south korea that the north has actually offered to freeze their nuclear program if the united states will freeze the offshore military exercises that we do twice a year. in is that the case to the best your knowledge and if so why is it not the american press. when you say offshore i don't know what you mean but i mean they are the military exercise us into helping to the iranians every year when it was all nervous u.s. and south korea a massive war games are the biggest more games in the world and you know of course these are as part of these war games of these these b. b. one bombers that fly in you know come in and they practice bombing runs and that kind of thing they fly through south korean skies like they've been over the last couple days but you know these exercises are massive yes there has been that offer

on the table in fact you know the chinese and the russians have both been talking about this proposal you know for the last few days and weeks in fact i mean at the u.n. when the u.n. voted sanctions well this weekend both the chinese ambassador and the russian ambassador you know focused on this proposal of you know freeze in north north korean freezing its missile in a nuclear programs in return for u.s. and south korea freezing or halting their exercises and you know frankly i think it's a homely you know way. they're forward right now is to have that but so far there's been rejected by the u.s. and of course you know the press really talks about it on fact the press really doesn't talk much it at all about what north korea is actually seeking it just sort of portrays them as a sort of you know insane you know attacker of the united states whereas the u.s. is this kind of innocent bystander in korea and in the portrayal is is is

completely ridiculous. it's become a caricature so what is north korea actually seeking well if you look at their if you read their statements like for example this week the foreign minister of north korea was at a meeting of foreign ministers from all over asia including secretary of state tell us it was there and he made a statement where he said you know north korea will not negotiate its nuclear weapons and missiles in till the u.s. drops its hostile policy this is a pretty standard line from from north korea but they always say unless and until the u.s. ends its hostile policy and so when this report it was reported this week in this washington the washington post they left out the part about dropping the hostile policy they just said north korea refuses to negotiate its nuclear weapons and missiles in so you know that cause is missing but it's a very important clause because you know when they mated when they cut

a deal with the united states in when president clinton in one thousand nine hundred four two. to put a moratorium on there at the time they didn't have nuclear weapons but they had a plutonium program to create plutonium and create weapons and they froze epithelium program for twelve years under that agreement as as part of the agreement the us agreed to you know fully normalize political and economic relations with north korea which to north korea meant dropping its hostile policy in ending the entity between the u.s. and north korea. and north korea is so over time they felt the u.s. backed off on that promise and in you know the agreement finally you know came apart during the bush administration for actually for other reasons but the north koreans believe very strongly that the u.s. did not fulfill its part of the bargain to dropping a hostile policy so they still stay on this issue and say you know they will negotiate they may not you know negotiate an end to their weapons but they're

willing to talk about it new denuclearization and. scaling the other missile program but they want the u.s. hostile policy to be ended and the parameters of that hostility that needs to be ended are what not while i think the war games they're talking war games or talking sanctions or talking economic warfare i mean the you know the north korea at the trading with the enemy you know that they've been under. under sanctions u.s. sanctions in big trade banning trade with them you know for decades and they would like to and they would like to and that so they see this as overall ending ending the hostile policy in fact you know during the late ninety's and even in the early two thousand c.e.o.'s in north korea made a lot of progress you know moving toward that goal i mean you know in the late ninety's. under the clinton mr ation as a seven extension of this agreement there was they came you know inches away very

very close to an agreement where north korea was going to completely end its all of its testing and production of missiles this is in one thousand nine hundred ninety two thousand and you know any sherman who was the secretary of state albright step in at the time later said the u.s. and north korea were tantalizingly close to that kind of agreement and then you know course you know president bush came along and the bush deal cons were against . these this is the agreed framework in. principle and they moved fairly rapidly to undo that undo that agreement and so it came apart but the agreement on the missiles you know never happened and that's that's that's kind of a tragedy because you know out of that came out of that failure came the next nuclear crisis when you know new north korea didn't explode its first bomb until

two thousand and six so you know it was well into the bush administration when that happened it's interesting the the two dueling narratives seemed to be more because out with them in ninety four it held until george bush basically said axis of evil and blew the whole thing up you know it's kind of shorthand but. and you know kind of like it's all the republicans fault than the other narrative is bill clinton worked out a deal they totally gamed him for six or seven or eight or ten years and they were actually secretly building new nukes in the background and we never should have trusted them and clinton was naive and you know we need to know him now or whatever i mean he had these seem to be that the republican and democratic narrative is there. is there a little bit of truth to each want to are is either one just completely false one of the other all there's a little bit of truth each one but the thing is you know late ninety's late ninety's i mean this agreement ninety four agreement was signed in october ninety

four november ninety four the republicans took the house took you know twelve congress the first time since the one nine hundred forty s. newt gingrich led the republicans at that time what did they do after they took over they began the attack this agreement is appeasement you can find you know quotes in interviews with john mccain at the time saying you know this agreement is just appeasement going back to chamberland and all this you know it's a big sell out you know we're paying we're basically bribing north korea to get rid of its weapons well in fact they froze their plutonium production for. twelve years i mean you know it's hard to scoff at that they'd be actually shut it all down and they do you know they've shut down their missiles missile production for a long time to the put a moratorium on their missiles so you know that the north koreans started complaining to you know privately to american visitors in around ninety seven that they thought the u.s. wasn't keeping its end of the deal and then that's sort of what led up to these

don't missile talks in the late one nine hundred ninety s. . but when the u.s. bush administration the issue they took to the north koreans and the reason they backed into the agreement was they they accuse the north koreans of starting any uranium based nuclear program you know they were they were enriching uranium and they knew that because u.s. intelligence had picked up the fact that north koreans were scouting around the world to buy centrifuges to process your medium to enrich uranium but they never did they never quite proved that they had any uranium facility in fact the north korean didn't admit to having the rainy facility for about nine years until about nine years later when they showed it to. that scientist hecker from the last almost and he came and they showed it to him in the two thousands but so it's kind of a murky history really but i think in reality you know both sides. broke the

agreement and they and i think that you know i think there's a possibility that it could be put together but you know if trump actually tried to create another agreement with them i can't imagine i can see you know being he would just be attacked and attacked for this just like clinton was kind of preset it didn't sell for him sure brilliant thank you so much for being with us sir thank you for shit the conversation coming up is donald trump turning the republican party into an authoritarian party the evidence suggests it might be more on that tonight's big picture annele.

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america question and more. all the food we go through. every the experience. you get on the you'll. go according to a gesture. as he continues with his talk about fire and fear and the total destruction of north korea is it time to take the power to use nuclear weapons way from donald trump let's ask tonight's big picture.

for that i'd spend our brand pruitt contributor to red state and doug christian political commentator thank you both for being here with us tonight. so donald trump is not breaking backing down from his threat to rain fire and fury on north korea at a press conference this afternoon in bedminster new jersey he told reporters that this threat was real and not a dare. he does something in guam it will be an event the likes of which nobody has seen before what will happen in north korea i mean. you'll see you'll see and he'll see you will see that in there it's a staple thanks to congressman california congressman ted lew and massachusetts senator ed markey there is legislation in the house and the senate right now that would ban any president this one from using nuclear weapons without

a declaration of war for from congress this seems rather reasonable to me on the one hand on the other hand if a hostile power were to throw nuclear weapons at us we might have less than five ten minutes to respond and i can't imagine congress doing anything in less than five or ten minutes so i'm kind of torn on this you know the idea of nukes and donald trump's hands makes me a little squirrelly the idea that we can't respond to a nuclear attack you know regardless of its origin that concerns me tremendously to first and foremost we need to remember that the trumpet ministration if this law were to be passed which it has zero chance of passing in a republican congress would immediately be appealed to the united states supreme court and we'd have a whole battle royale in the courts over what really the role of the commander in chief is the second thing is that the national command authority is is is currently designed to be able to react quickly and as you indicated congress is notorious for

not responding quickly i think we need to have a discussion about you know whether the president is allowed to instantly respond to a threat to an incoming attack versus a preemptive slash first strike which i think is the gray area that needs to be discussed so if he was going to do a preemptive strike he could we could write the legislation that he requires requires a declaration of congress. otherwise if it's reactive i mean you know i think it's worth having the conversation i agree doug well i think that part of the problem is that it gets down to whether or not donald trump is actually has any knowledge about foreign policy military strategy all this kind of thing it makes me wonder whether we need a constitutional amendment actually in terms of. to be qualified to be president not just that you're thirty five not the just that you were a natural born citizen but maybe that you could pass the foreign service

examination perhaps you knew something about foreign policy before you even got into that position if you're a doctor you need to actually have certification to be a doctor if you're a pilot you need to know how to fly an airplane. i think that gets you know i understand what you're saying and i think the whole process of elections is designed to reveal that i mean that's why we have primaries that's why we have campaigns that's why we have elections i would argue that if it weren't for massive media consolidation and the end of the fairness doctrine so the media is doing nothing but chasing ratings the and therefore they deliver two billion dollars worth of free advertising to donald trump when you combine that with the you know massive billionaire influence pushing republican candidates all across the country and doing a really really really effective get out the vote effort in the last election between the billionaires and and the media we got donald trump i don't think it has any do with the stupidity american people i think we got duped let's also not

forget i sleep well at night because we've got people like now secretary mabus general kelly at the chief says she's a staff position we've got rex tillerson at state there are people in the national defense infrastructure that are there to provide counsel obviously the way our system works is the commander in chief has the ultimate say but i believe what he has done is put in a good team of people that care about the united states that understand the law of unintended consequences for these sorts of these sorts of issues these sorts of statements any action that the president might decide to take so i trust that those people that are in those positions people like tina pow at the national security council h.r. mcmaster those people surround him or cocoon him in a bubble of really really well qualified people when it comes to to discern

yesterday yesterday morning nature mcmaster and john kelly were not at five thirty the morning banging on his bedroom going i know you've got that power and there but i know what you know i mean that also and the wall street journal had to to come. basters defense actually because steve bennett and his cronies were you know there's a war inside the white house it's amazing ok previous polls have found than a full half fifty percent or more of republicans believe that donald trump actually won the popular vote and now a new poll from the washington post has found that a similar percentage of republicans fifty two percent would support donald trump if he called for the two thousand and twenty alexion to be postponed until there was an absolutely certain only us citizens could vote so as donald trump completed the republican party's transformation into an authoritarian political party not at all this this whole i read the details on this poll this poll only had thirteen hundred people as a sample size then for me for a poll it's ridiculously small in

a country of three over three hundred million people i believe polling is completely corrupted at this point. when we're having a whole news cycle consumed by what is three hundred people there was six hundred six hundred republicans and only half of them thought this that's three hundred people in a country of over three hundred million and a sample sizes were used routinely for polls leading up to the large absolutely which you know very rarely were off by more than two or three points i find it obscene that three hundred people are now dictating an entire new cycle the second point i want to make just very quickly is that remember we've tried this before right rudy giuliani after nine eleven attempted to postpone the new york mayoral election and the citizens of them when they forgot it was yeah and the citizens of new york republicans and democrats rose up against that idea because the whole

point was that america and american processes had to continue in the midst of the worst tragedy that we had had and the gregs and also let's not forget abraham lincoln who actually. thought he's going to lose the eight hundred sixty four election but went forward and he with it with the election. his advisors said you're going to lose and he said but we have to keep democracy go on in the midst of a civil war in the midst of a civil war that's that's pretty remarkable so doug do you do you think that trump is making america more authoritarian. yes but i also think it's up to it's up to us to do to push back i think fortunately congress is beginning to behave like congress again not just be and this is a gift and you know george will get a month long vacation hiding from their. job but i mean george will wrote about this that in fact there are no congress is beginning to say ok we are co-equal

branch of government we are going to push back and they haven't terms of the treaty . but the sanctions in terms of making sure that they're protect the moeller. in terms of even health care i mean they have actually been doing their job arguably brian. john dean wrote a book called con conservatism out of conscience which was based on a book i forget the title or the name of the original author who is a psychologist he wrote a book called the authoritarians there was a big deal back in the seventy's and dean kind of basis becomes i've talked with him a number of times about it and he made the point that authoritarianism in the united states mostly resides on the right but it seems like about ten percent of americans just genetically or whatever are inclined to authoritarianism are you concerned about the authoritarian trends in your party i think i am concerned the republican and i say this big are republican that means conservatives that means moderates

that means there's even you know a few liberal republicans left we need to address those folks that were drawn to tromp because the if you look at it going down the line if republican and republicanism and conservatism doesn't address the needs of those people that were drawn drawn to try. he could very easily start his own third party sort of see himself post presidency running a you know a whole third faction in america which is a huge concern not only for republicans but should also be for democrats well there's a bunch of congressional races where where people have gotten into the primaries as trump republicans and it'll take it'll take trump trump's team really creating a ground game with a foundation in each state and that that that has not happened yet and also let's not forget that there have been a third tarion tendencies on the left as well for instance you ask was actually a product initially american activity as

a fifty's and said initially at the committee right initially though it was actually a product of the left before it became subsumed by the right. so people like robert f. kennedy it worked for joe joe so i mean it can happen on both sides when you have people who get over the top ideological perhaps so might authoritarianism we just have a minute to wrap this up and i'd like to draw a little deeper into this might if there were a turn ism be a natural response and way to uncertainty and fear certainly very question i think there's that people people want to be taking care of the that's why government exists a lot of people see that through the republican party i would argue that a lot of a lot of human nature is people are being drawn to the democratic party because the democratic party is offering government answers for everything there's only a short slippery slope to authoritarianism on the left as well as well. i have not

seen the evidence of that i mean. outside of f.d.r. with the internment camps which i'm not sure you can call a third terrorism i just call that misguided. the communist movement and you know in the united states i mean it wasn't that long ago that alger hiss do you know i had i had the president of the communist party you know stay. on my radio show last year and i was like how's it going and he's like we're up to five hundred thirty two members i mean there's no there's no left in the edit there's a different there's different definitions of authoritarianism you know in the conservative movement we consider government run health care you know making decisions on who gets to go to what doctor and what how they buy that's a slippery slope to authoritarian but that's not really you know we've got to wrap it up brian and. great having both same thing thank you and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag your.

most people think just stand out in this business you need to be the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice so the biggest raid in truth to stand this is just the dance the right questions and the right answers. i'm going to go just. as you're watching all of. us question.

all the world's a stage and all the news companies merely players but what kind of parties are into america playing artie america offers more artsy american person. in many ways the news landscape is just like this you know real news big names good

actors bad actors and in the end you could never you're on. some other parking place all the world's a stage all the world's a stage all the world's a stage and we are definitely a player. on the loose so night the president doubles down on north korea and suggest fire in fury might be going to he's the on the country. and the president goes on the attack challenging mitch mcconnell and threatening his leadership of the united states senate and john mccain unveils a new. we'll see in america longest running war in afghanistan calling for more troops to the country i'm ed schultz reporting tonight from the r t newsroom this is the news on r.t. america.

good evening friends we start tonight with north korea and the president of the united states doubling down on his threat to the asian nation in a press conference today the president said fire in fury light not have been tough enough. there are no big surprise as i heard i mean to be honest general mattis may have taken a step beyond what i said there was no mixed messages and rex was just you know stating to you that look is the view i said yesterday i don't have to say it again and i'll tell you this it may be tougher than i said it not less it be very well be tougher than i said. later the same afternoon the president delivered what was perhaps his clearest set of remarks on a number of issues his administration is addressing president trump made it clear how he would deal with north korea versus the.