North Korea can now strike the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile — the type of missile used to carry a nuclear warhead — but not with enough accuracy to hit a specific target in the United States, the second-highest ranking U.S. general told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. And according to a new poll also released Tuesday, the American public has very little confidence that Donald Trump can handle the North Korean threat.
While more than 80 percent of Americans believe that North Korea poses a threat to the U.S., and three of out of four say they are concerned the crisis over that country’s nuclear program could erupt into all-out war, only about one in every three U.S. citizens has faith that Trump can handle the situation, according to the new ABC News/ Washington Post poll .
North Korea on July 4 tested what appears to be its most powerful missile yet: an ICBM that experts say could reach Alaska or Hawaii with a nuclear warhead. Perhaps even more significantly, the Hwasong-14 missile test showed that with its accelerated nuclear program under “supreme leader” Kim Jong Un, North Korea may be as close as a single year away from developing a missile that could deliver a targeted nuclear strike to the west coast of the U.S. mainland.
In January of this year, prior to his inauguration, Trump promised in a post to his Twitter account that though North Korea was “in the final stages” of developing a missile capable of a nuclear strike on the United States, “it won’t happen.” But according to the vice chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Paul Selva, less than six months into Trump’s term, it already has.
North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017
“They clearly have the capability,” Selva told the Armed Services Committee in his Tuesday testimony.
But Selva said that with its current missile technology, North Korea would essentially be shooting blind at the U.S., firing a nuclear missile with no accuracy.
“What the experts tell me is that the North Koreans have yet to demonstrate the capacity to do the guidance and control that would be required,” Selva testified, adding that if the North Koreans were to launch a nuclear strike under current conditions, they lacked “the capacity to strike the United States with any degree of accuracy or reasonable confidence of success.”
But with North Korea between just one or two years away from developing that deadly capability, according to experts , only 36 percent of Americans say that they trust Trump to handle the situation, according to the ABC/ WaPo poll .
At the same time, 63 percent say that they do not trust Trump to capably manage the North Korean threat — and an alarming 40 percent say that they trust Trump “not at all” to handle North Korea, the poll found — a startling lack of confidence by the American people in a president, with regard to a national security threat.
While American adults under the age of 40 are less likely to view North Korea as a serious threat — with only 49 percent seeing the “serious” nature of the North Korean situation compared to 77 percent for adults 40 and older — the younger adults are also more distrustful of Trump to handle North Korea, with just 29 percent saying they trust him, compared to 41 percent of the older Americans.
[Featured Image by KRT/AP Images]