President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that he had told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that he was "wasting his time" negotiating with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Tillerson had previously signaled that the U.S. has been reaching out to the North Korean regime to attempt to ease the on-going tensions over Kim's increasingly belligerent nuclear and missile testing, tests which prompted unanimous sanctions from the U.N. Security Council. The State Department has said that North Korea has been unresponsive to their requests.
Trump appeared dismissive of the viability of such negotiations in his Sunday tweets.
"I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man," Trump wrote, using a diminutive term he has coined for the leader of North Korea.
"Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!" he wrote.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/914497947517227008
Numerous U.S. leaders have made clear that there is a "military option" on the table in combating the Kim regime's nuclear expansionism. In August, Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis were already preparing a military option; National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said a military option was on the table in September.
For his part, Trump has said that a military option is "not a first choice. But we will see what happens."