Obama Used Same Stern Rhetoric on N Korea as Trump, But Preferred Different Ways

The CEO’s remarks come after the Korean Central News Agency reported last week that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had received a letter from US President Donald Trump, with Kim reportedly praising Trump’s interest in holding a second North Korea-US summit scheduled for later this month.

Although both Barack Obama and Donald Trump used similarly stern rhetoric regarding North Korea, the former US president didn’t use social networks to express his views on the crisis, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said during a conversation with podcast host Joe Rogan.

Dorsey stressed the importance of looking at Trump’s bellicose tweets on North Korea in the “context” of other media, saying that “it was the context that presidents of this country have used similar language on different mediums”.

“They say it on radio, they say it on television. If you were to look at President Obama, it wasn’t the exact same tone, but there were threats surrounding the same country. We have to take that context into consideration,” Dorsey pointed out.

When Obama was president, he, in particular, noted that the US “could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals”, a remark that wasn’t criticised.

Trump, in contrast, was slammed for posting a spate of jocular tweets which specifically described the DPRK leader as a “little rocket man” and noted that Trump’s “nuclear button” was “bigger and more powerful” than Kim’s.

The landmark Trump-Kim summit took place on 12 June 2018 in Singapore, where the two leaders reached an agreement that stipulates North Korea will denuclearise in exchange for a freeze on US-South Korean military drills and potential sanctions relief.
In mid-September, Trump said that the United States had made “tremendous” progress with North Korea, and the entire situation on the Korean Peninsula had “calmed down”.

“Prior to my coming into office a lot of people thought it was inevitable we were going to war in North Korea and now we’re, the relationships, I have to tell you, at least on a personal basis are very good,” Trump told reporters.

Earlier this week, CNN cited an unnamed source as saying that a second summit between Trump and Kim may be held in the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang in late February.