President Donald Trump again warned North Korea Friday about its threats against the United States, saying of that country's leader Kim Jong Un, he "will not get away with what he's doing."
"If he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat -- which, by the way, he has been uttering for years, and his family has been uttering for years -- or if he does anything with respect to Guam or any place else that's an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it, and he will regret it fast," said Trump.
Speaking later on Friday, Trump reassured residents of the U.S. territory in the western Pacific. "I feel they will be very safe," he said. "Believe me, they will be very safe. And if anything happens to Guam, there's going to be big, big trouble in North Korea."
Trump has spent much of the first week of his 17-day-long working vacation sparring with the hostile Asian nation. His comment warning Kim against making further threats comes as North Korea claims to be preparing plans to attack the U.S. territory of Guam. One of its military leaders also called Trump "bereft of reason" and said he was "extremely getting on the nerves" of its armed forces.
"Only absolute force can work on him," said General Kim Rak Gyom, the commander of the North Korean military's Strategic Rocket Forces, of Trump, on Wednesday.
Trump has said America will respond to North Korean threats with "fire and fury," and, later, that the "fire and fury" rhetoric "wasn't tough enough."
But he refused to say Thursday whether he was considering any preemptive measures against North Korea.
On Friday, Trump indicated that he believed he was sending a clear message to North Korea.
"I hope that they are going to fully understand the gravity of what I said, and what I said is what I mean," said Trump, adding, "Those words are very, very easy to understand."
Trump additionally responded Friday to an Associated Press report that a U.S. official has been involved in back-channel diplomatic efforts with North Korea lasting several months.
"We don't want to talk about back channels," said Trump. "We want to talk about a country that has misbehaved for many, many years, decades, actually … we'll either be very, very successful, quickly, or we're going to be very, very successful in a different way, quickly."
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