Donald Trump reportedly frightened Pentagon with an almost-sent tweet on North Korea
‘My God, one tweet and we have reliable information that the North Koreans are going to read this as an attack is imminent’
US President Donald Trump spooked the Pentagon leadership with a tweet that – had it been sent – North Korea would have read as a sign of an imminent US attack, journalist Bob Woodward said in an interview that aired on Sunday.
Woodward, whose new book Fear: Trump in the White House hits book stores on Tuesday, described the incident in the interview with CBS as the most dangerous moment of Trump’s nuclear stand-off with North Korea.
“He drafts a tweet saying ‘We are going to pull our dependents from South Korea – family members of the 28,000 people there,’” Woodward said on CBS Sunday Morning, referring to families of US troops stationed on the Korean peninsula.
The tweet never was sent because of a back-channel message from the North Koreans that they would view it as a sign the US was preparing to attack, according to CBS.
“At that moment there was a sense of profound alarm in the Pentagon leadership that, ‘My God, one tweet and we have reliable information that the North Koreans are going to read this as ‘an attack is imminent’”.
US tensions with North Korea have subsided since Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met in Singapore June 12, 2018.