US President Donald Trump has boasted that his nuclear button is "much bigger" and "more powerful" than North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's. Mr Trump's tweet is the latest contribution to the bickering, increasingly personalised feud between the nuclear-armed leaders. Mr Kim threatened earlier this week that his nuclear launch button was "always on my table". Unsurprisingly, Mr Trump's unorthodox words sent social media into a frenzy.
Mr Trump's latest comment states the obvious: any US president has immediate access to the nuclear codes and the US has the world's biggest nuclear arsenal. North Korea claims it has nuclear weapons and could attack the US, but while analysts agree that Pyongyang has nuclear weapons, it is not clear whether it has the technology to use them in anger. Just as the president's unorthodox Twitter habits have puzzled observers in the past, the tweet is again redefining what's considered a diplomatic or presidential tone.
Many people online have expressed alarm at the apparently light-hearted use of nuclear threats by world leaders.
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