Putting ideas into Dear Leader's head again.

to go from using its nukes as propoganda with its people to actually using them that they had better be prepared for retaliation by the US.

"I see your 'Effective and overwhelming' and raise you a "devastating and amazingly catastrophic!"

You know, MAD.

You think Russia is going to escalate over NK? I'm sure Trumps best buddy will bless the action beforehand. As would the rest of the world probably . If China's dumb enough to get involved they would cease to exist too leaving Russia as the preeminent power on that side of the globe.

on North Korea or on China or Russia of course which is unlikely even with Trump in office and if he should try to use the nukes for anything short of an invasion on the US or one of our allies or some other country using their nukes first on the US or our allies hopefully someone would have the common sense to take the launch ability from him.

NK isn't important enough to either one to get them to put birds in the air.

North Korea? Why are these folks SO PROVOCATIVE?

The same with the ballistic missile test... If I'm not mistaken, when there is a new POTUS, this has happened before... It's as if they are saying "look, we are here".. that is ALL it is

Be kind of late after they use the nukes. So then we'd have two cowboys shooting it out, and the whole world loses. It looks like we're just rattling our sabers at the world right now to compensate for Trump's tiny hands.

.....even without the multi-layered ABM defenses we now have.
Their missiles have a terrible track record for successful launches.
Then they'd have to get by the AEGIS navy vessels in the western pacific, then make it past the
Ground-Based Midcourse Defense. (consisting of ground-based interceptor missiles and radar in the United States in Alaska, which would intercept incoming warheads in space.Currently some GBI missiles are located at Vandenberg AFB in California. These GBIs can be augmented by mid-course SM-3 interceptors fired from Navy ships.)
Then past any THAAD or Patriot batteries terminal defenses, if any, near target.
Then successfully detonate over target, also unlikely as they have had fizziles in even their underground tests, even more less likely to work after surviving launch and hi-G's and re-entry temperatures and miniaturization.
It's unlikely they have even have a working warhead yet, lots of hurdles.

If NK had nuked Seoul under Obama's watch, you can be damn sure they'd be a smoking pile of rubble by now as well. We don't need to respond with nukes of our own, either. Their SAM sites could be knocked out in days by stealth bombers, opening the way for saturation bombing with B-2's and B-52's from the US, Guam and Diego Garcia. A few precision strikes on their hydroelectric sites, and half the country goes dark.

Matti's is simply reiterating a long-standing policy.