North Korea Threats, No Chinese Help Raise Questions On Trump's Leadership Skills

President Donald Trump's shrill warning that any threat from North Korea to the United States would be met with “fire and fury,” did not prevent Pyongyang from issuing another threat to the United States just a day later.

In a statement published by the North’s state-run news agency KCNA on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Strategic Force of Korean People’s Army (KPA) said the country was examining a plan to strike the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. The spokesman further added the plan to strike the territory about 3,400 km away from North Korea with medium-to-long range missiles would be “put into practice in a multi-current and consecutive way any moment" following a decision by the supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

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Another statement was later issued by the spokesman for the General Staff of the KPA where he warned against the U.S. war hysteria and claimed it would bring a “miserable end of the American Empire.” “Under the prevailing grave situation, the General Staff of the KPA clarifies at home and abroad its resolute stand as follows to mercilessly smash all sorts of military provocation, being planned by the U.S. imperialist warmongers, with the inexhaustible military might of the powerful revolutionary Paektusan army which has so far been built.”

However, in a video message, Gov. Eddie Baza Calvo rebuffed the warning saying there was no threat to Guam. He asserted the administration was prepared to face any sort of eventuality. In the video message shared on his official Twitter account, he also reminded Guam was not just a military installation and had more than 200,000 U.S. citizens living in the region.

During Trump's 200 days of presidency where he has largely relied on Twitter to communicate his administrative decisions and foreign policy, the threats by North Korea have seemingly come across as one of his biggest challenges. His strong remarks have apparently failed to induce confidence among the people in the United States. A CBS poll Tuesday revealed not too many U.S. citizens are confident about the way he is handling Pyongyang.

About 72 percent of the people who participated in the poll that surveyed 1,111 adults in the U.S. said they were uneasy about the possibility of a conflict between the two countries. Nearly 61 percent of the respondents said they were uneasy about the president’s ability to handle the North Korea nuclear situation.

Some social media users have also expressed concern over the heightened tensions between the two nations and expressed doubts over Trump's leadership skills.

Apart from ratcheting up the rhetoric, Trump has not talked about any viable plans to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat. Earlier, he had expressed disappointment with China, saying he expected Beijing to act against Pyongyang.

North Korea is one of China's biggest trade partners. In another tweet, the POTUS said China “could easily solve the problem.”

The tweets he posted in July was not the first time he thought Chinese help was the solution to resolve the North Korean dilemma. He had posted a similar tweet in June.

Now that Trump has stepped up his war of words with North Korea, a former intel chief, and several U.S. senators, have warned the POTUS against stoking the tensions. In an interview with CNN, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said: “We need to tone down the rhetoric of regime change and all this. As desirable as that may be, all that does is amp up the paranoia.”

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Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) also took exception to Trump’s remarks made Tuesday. "The great leaders I've seen don't threaten unless they're ready to act and I'm not sure President Trump is ready to act,” he said in an interview with Phoenix radio station KTAR.

Meanwhile, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) reminded Trump would need an approval from Congress to strike North Korea. "[I]f one of the military options that the administration is looking at is a preemptive war on the Korean peninsula launched by the United States, that would require the authorization of Congress," he told Fox News.

However, Trump, who has even praised Kim Jong Un on previous instances, has apparently not made up his mind on how to deal with the emerging threats.