Trump contradicts Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on North Korea and 'Little Rocket Man'
President Donald Trump on Sunday diverged from the US State Department and said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was "wasting him time" opening up talks with the North Korean regime.
"I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man," Trump tweeted, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"
The comments came after Tillerson told reporters in Beijing on Saturday that the US has a direct line of communication open with Pyongyang over North Korea's nuclear tests. "We're not in a dark situation, a blackout," Tillerson said.
The secretary of state acknowledged that the situation with the rogue nation was "overheated" and said the US' first priority was to calm things down, according to The Washington Post.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider on Saturday that the US has opened up channels of communication with North Korea, but is "not interested in promoting the collapse of the current regime, pursuing regime change, accelerating reunification of the peninsula, or mobilizing forces north of the DMZ [demilitarized zone]."
Despite those assurances, the spokesperson said, "North Korean officials have shown no indication that they are interested in or are ready for talks regarding denuclearization."
The threat that North Korea poses has rapidly escalated in recent weeks. The rogue nation fired a missile over Japan a few weeks ago for the second time in two months.
Earlier this month, North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, one the country said was a hydrogen bomb.
Trump ramped up his rhetoric against North Korea when the United Nations General Assembly convened on September 23, saying that "rocket man" Kim Jong Un was on a "suicide mission," and that if he did not back down, the US would "have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."
Kim responded by saying he would "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire." North Korea's foreign minister also said that Trump's comments made the possibility of a missile attack on the US mainland "all the more inevitable."