If it was in fact a ruse it seems disclosing that fact now is not a good idea in case the President has to return to fire and fury rhetoric:
Outgoing United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley said she used President Donald Trump’s unpredictability and bellicose rhetoric to persuade other world leaders they had to crack down on North Korea or the U.S. would take military action. “I bounced it off the president’s rhetoric, saying, ‘I can’t stop him. I’m not gonna be able to control him. We’ve gotta get this done,'” Haley told The Atlantic magazine in an interview published Friday. “The president had really strengthened his rhetoric at that point,” Haley said, presumably referring to Trump’s threat to unleash “fire and fury” on the North Korean regime. “All of that was very, very helpful, because I would say, ‘You know, I don’t know what he’s gonna do,'” she recounted. ” … I said, ‘He very well could use military action.’” Haley said she knew Trump’s harsh rhetoric was a ruse. Asked if the U.S. was really close to war with North Korea, she said no. “Having said that, if they had launched something, if it had come near the U.S., the president totally would have. But at the time, were we gonna instigate something? No,” she told The Atlantic.
This seems like a pretty odd thing to say unless the US has some kind of intelligence that the North Koreans are going to commit some kind of provocation during the Winter Olympics:
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in an interview with Fox News that her country’s participation in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics next February was an “open question” due to security concerns over North Korea, stirring worries in South Korea Friday that the Games could flop.
South Korea’s Blue House scrambled to rebut the idea, saying U.S. President Donald Trump had “promised” President Moon Jae-in during a recent phone call that his country would participate.
During an interview with Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum” on Wednesday, Haley said the U.S. government has not decided yet whether to participate in the games, adding, “What we will do is make sure we are taking every precaution possible to make sure” that American athletes are “safe and to know everything that’s going on around them.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but the North Koreans have not committed any provocation nearly as bad as what happened before the 1988 Olympics in Seoul when they bombed KAL Flight 858 killing 115 people. Despite that provocation the US still participated in the Seoul Olympics.
The North Korean regime has their sexist caricature of Nikki Haley that they love to repeat to try and discredit her:
Nikki Haley
As for the North Koreans, their official news agency on Friday said the country’s “nuclear weaponization … has reached its final phase.”
The KCNA report sharply criticized U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley for playing “the flagship role” in the Trump administration’s “hideous sanctions and pressure racket against the DPRK.”
The agency called Haley “a political prostitute” and dismissed as “rubbish” her comments at an emergency Security Council meeting Monday following the latest nuclear test that the DPRK is “begging for a war.” The agency accused the U.S. of being the “chieftain of aggression and war and wrecker of peace.”
The U.S. Mission to the United Nations said it had no comment on the KCNA report, which concluded by saying: “The U.S. administration will have to pay a dear price for her tongue-lashing.” [Associated Press]
