Rachel Maddow took a dark message from Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, saying the whole affair left her with a feeling that the president was itching for armed conflict with North Korea.
“He wants a war with North Korea if you take him by what he says,” said Maddow during MSNBC’s State of the Union snap analysis. “It’s no departure from how he’s been for the last eight months toward North Korea.”
In his speech, Trump blasted the rogue nation, inviting both a regime dissident and the parents of American student Otto Warmbier to watch the speech as official guests. Warmbier was imprisoned by the country for a year on trumped-up charges and ultimately tortured to death.
“Americans don’t like North Korea. We are always seeing pictures of them goose-stepping past their capitol with all their artillery. We don’t like them. We’ve never liked them,” noted Chris Matthews. “Why stoke the fires tonight? Why did he bring up the really tough case of the family losing their kid who was hiking through the mountains there? What was the whole point of that? Are we getting ready for war?”
“He says he doesn’t want to use nuclear weapons so I don’t know what the plan is,” Matthews added.
MSNBC wasn’t the only place to cotton on to the “President is itching for war with North Korea” line. Vox took much the same position.
“He talked about North Korea the way George W. Bush talked about Iraq,” wrote the website.
“This is how American presidents sell wars absent an imminent threat. They paint the prospective enemy as evil, an enemy of civilization, something that must be defeated both to preserve our own safety and to secure the future of humanity.”