Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that President Donald Trump wants him to push forward on diplomacy with North Korea "until the first bomb drops."
Tillerson's comments on ABC's "This Week" program on Sunday apparently weren't meant literally as a timeline for war, as he preceded that quote by saying, "He has made it clear to me to continue my diplomatic efforts," and that those efforts "will continue until the first bomb drops."
Still, they came as South Korean military officials are readying for another possible missile launch by Pyongyang. Multiple South Korean media reports over the weekend, citing unidentified military officials, said North Korean missile vehicles "kept appearing and disappearing" from the map and "transporter erector launchers" had been spotted carrying ballistic missiles.
Several times, Trump has said that diplomacy with North Korea _ including Tillerson's effort _ was futile, saying on Oct. 7 that "only one thing will work!" in dealing with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's ambitions for nuclear weapons capable of reaching the U.S. Two days earlier, Trump had said cryptically during a dinner with military leaders that observers were seeing "the calm before the storm."
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(Ben Brody contributed to this report.)
