Governor of Ohio John Kasich urged Donald Trump to “take out” the top leadership in North Korea in order to solve the looming nuclear weapon problem.
“We are getting very serious that they cannot have an ICBM. There’s a point at which saber-rattling is not effective, and you have to be very careful on how you approach that,” Kasich said at the Monitor Breakfast in Washington Friday. “I think you have to be careful that you get to a certain point. What do I think is going to happen there? I think the THAAD is the first big leverage I’ve seen against China. I mean, China does not want THAAD on their border…”
“I’m pretty convinced — because there is the problem of bombing where you’re going to lose a million people — I think there might be a way. And that has to do with taking out the North Korean leadership. I’ll just leave it there.”
(Photo: Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor)
A reporter pressed Kasich if he meant Kim Jong-un should be “taken out” militarily.
“If you can’t figure that out…you know exactly what I’m talking about,” Kasich said. “The North Korean top leadership has to go. And there are ways in which that can be achieved. You have to have very good intelligence. You have to have an ability to do things very quickly. It’s not beyond our capability to achieve that — an ability to remove the top people and have a more benign leadership there that understands what’s at risk I think is best perhaps.”
“Moving big warships in and having a war, I don’t think that’s going to work. Too much loss of life. But again, I don’t have the generals sitting around the table…I think the best way to solve this problem is to eradicate the leadership. I don’t need to say any more than that.”
(Photo: REUTERS/KCNA)
In an interview with Reuters this week, Trump warned that diplomatic efforts could fail and “major, major conflict” with North Korea is possible.
“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea,” the president said in an interview with Reuters Thursday. “Absolutely. We’d love to solve things diplomatically but it’s very difficult.” (RELATED: Trump Warns That ‘Major, Major Conflict With North Korea’ Is Possible)
