Trump advisers warned foreign nations the president was unpredictable and might declare war: new book

On Thursday, CNN reported that President Donald Trump's advisers were afraid to give him military options to resolve conflicts — and warned hostile foreign powers that the president was unpredictable and might declare war.

"These accounts are contained in my upcoming book, 'The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World,' which will be published August 11 by Harper Collins," reported Jim Sciutto. "'We used to only think of Kim Jong Un as unpredictable. Now we had Trump as unpredictable,' Joseph Yun, who served as President Trump's special representative for North Korea policy until 2018, told me. 'And I would communicate that.' Yun recalled that during the worsening standoff with North Korea in 2017, the Pentagon hesitated to give the President a broad range of military options, concerned that he might indeed order a major military attack on the North."

The president's bellicosity on Iran reportedly also alarmed officials.

"Earlier, in September 2018, when a handful of mortar shells struck near the US Embassy in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone causing no casualties or serious damage, Pentagon officials were surprised when they received a call from a senior official on the National Security Council demanding military options for the President to retaliate against Iran. That NSC official said the President wanted to know immediately how and when the United States could respond," said the report. Pentagon officials were reportedly "dumbfounded," with Gen. Paul Selva briefly muting the conference call and asking his colleagues, "is this a joke?"

Ultimately, the Trump administration has managed to avoid getting involved in new wars, although there have been a number of close calls, with the president getting into a war of words with "little Rocket Man" Kim Jong Un, and killing Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in a strike.

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