Report: Bombing North Korea ‘Might Help in the Midterm Elections’ Senior Trump Official Alleged to Say

UPDATE: White House Denies

Matthew Pottinger, a senior official on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council reportedly has said that bombing North Korea “might help in the midterm elections.” 

The quote appears to have first been reported in an op-ed in the South Korean daily newspaper, The Hankyoreh. Here is the quote, including sufficient text to ensure full context:

Meanwhile, the Russia scandal is raising the possibility that Trump not only faces a difficult road to re-election but could end up impeached. Depending on how the mid-term elections in November turn out, he could find himself a lame duck. This raises the troubling question of whether he might consider a strike against North Korea as a way out of his domestic political crisis.

Indeed, White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”

U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) Friday night posted a tweet highlighting the extraordinarily disturbing remarks, and retweeting The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, who had retweeted the Wall Street Journal’s Seoul Bureau Chief Jonathan Cheng. Cheng first noted the quote in The Hankyoreh:

If this quote is accurate, Pottinger must be fired, he and the Trump administration must issue an apology and tell the American people and North Korea this is not U.S. policy.

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall weighed in, saying, “I’d say we need to know more about. Quickly,” and adding, “this sounds like something we need to know more about very quickly.”

UPDATE: 10:24 PM ET –
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denies the claim and criticizes the Wall Street Journal’s reporter:

Image by Kurtis Garbutt via Flickr and a CC license