Fox & Friends and Morning Joe equate Obama arguing against annihilating North Korea with Trump's threat to actually do it

At the UN, Trump said the US might “have no choice” but to “totally destroy North Korea”

Written by Media Matters Staff

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After President Donald Trump at the United Nations “vowed to ‘totally destroy North Korea’ if it threatened the United States,” both Fox & Friends and Morning Joe took former President Barack Obama out of context to suggest he had said the same thing. Obama, in fact, made the case against doing so, saying, “It's not something that lends itself to an easy solution. We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, Republic of Korea."

Fox & Friends and Morning Joe echoed a tweet from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who cited Obama’s quote and wrote, “Presidents have always been clear to deter threats.” But, as The Washington Post explained, “Trump was saying the United States might ‘have no choice’ but to do what Obama was merely saying the U.S. was capable of.” From the September 20 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends:

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): No, it's not baby stuff, Joy Behar. We're talking about North Korea. This is the leader of North Korea who wants to wipe you out, wants to wipe out our country, is preparing to do that. And we are giving them money or other countries that were sitting in that room are giving him money to fund that. So it's not baby stuff. The president, [Ambassador to the U.N.] Nikki Haley, they have all said we don't want to do that. If we have to do that, we will do that. If we have to go to that extreme. But we have warned him and warned him and warned him, and if not, it's going to be too late.



BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): President Obama also used the same term, that he would annihilate North Korea, in the past. He just did it in a way that Joy Behar found more acceptable.



STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Well one of the things that Joy Behar left out, and while she said President Obama never talked about wiping out North Korea, it was on President Obama's watch that North Korea for eight years was able to develop a nuclear warhead and missile that could reach the United States of America.

From the September 20 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): And I will say also that one of the headline grabbers was he said he could destroy North Korea, we could completely obliterate North Korea. And of course, we were all concerned about that. We should be. He shouldn't have said that. And then I think somebody brought up an old Barack Obama quote, where we talked about we have the weapons, the nuclear weapons, to annihilate North Korea, as well. Again, something you don't want to do, but again, it's been done before.