§67 —
On fire and fury
Democrat
TACO
This year's fold came in capitals. August 16: "Based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!" — the annual drills with South Korea, cut to please Pyongyang. Seoul's defense ministry said the same day the drills were "proceeding as planned" 1. Three days later the two militaries announced the compromise: Ulchi Freedom Shield shortened from eleven days to five, August 17 to 21, its second phase canceled 2. The ally ran the exercise, and ran less of it.
The north kept its own schedule. On August 11 it fired what the South's joint chiefs counted as the eleventh ballistic missile launch of 2026 3. On August 20, as the shortened drills ended, it fired more than ten short-range missiles in one salvo 4. Fire and fury, nine years on: the drills are shorter, the launches are in double digits for the year, and the rockets that got reduced were ours.
Sources
- "I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!"; Seoul's defense ministry: drills "proceeding as planned" — NBC News, 16 August 2026 ↑
- Ulchi Freedom Shield cut from eleven days to five, 17–21 August, second phase canceled — Reuters via Military Times, 19 August 2026 ↑
- The eleventh ballistic missile launch of 2026, per South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff — The Washington Post / AP, 11 August 2026 ↑
- More than ten short-range ballistic missiles launched as the drills ended — Al Jazeera, 20 August 2026 ↑
Republican
FIRE AND FURY
The sentence was delivered from a golf club in New Jersey on August 8, 2017, at a briefing about opioids, and it is worth having exactly: "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before" 1. I'll grant the theory, because it is an old one: a small nuclear state is deterred by a large one only if the large one sounds willing. The insults that followed — "Little Rocket Man" — were the same volume knob.
What followed the volume was Singapore in June 2018 and Hanoi in February 2019, where the president walked out with no agreement and no follow-on 2. The far end of this dial is the sentence itself, nine years old now. The needle has sat on it since, and the other side of the page has what it has been reading in the meantime.
Sources
“I brought the calendar. August 8, 2017 — fire and fury. June 2018 — Singapore. February 2019 — Hanoi, no deal, the plane leaves early. August 16, 2026 — "substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises," his capitals. August 17 to 21 — the drills, five days instead of eleven. August 20 — more than ten missiles from the north, as the drills end. Excuse me, before you go — the fire and the fury, in nine years. Whose was it?”— Lou
“"Fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before." What the world saw was two summits, a walkout in Hanoi, and nine years later an order to shrink our own drills to please the guy with the missiles. The ally cut the exercise from eleven days to five. Pyongyang answered the last day with ten rockets. Fire and fury turned out to be the drills.”
“The president reduced the exercises as a gesture of friendship, the ally ran them anyway as a gesture of alliance, and North Korea launched missiles as a gesture of consistency — everybody in the region gestured, which is what stability looks like.”