According to a new section of a book that summarises significant events of his administration, President Donald Trump pondered using a nuclear bomb against North Korea in 2017 and said he could blame a U.S. strike against the communist dictatorship on another nation.

According to a new afterword to a book by New York Times Washington journalist Michael Schmidt, Trump allegedly made the remarks as tensions between the United States and Kim Jong-un grew more intense, frightening then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

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NBC News was able to get the new portion of “Donald Trump v. the United States” before it was released in paperback on Tuesday. It provides a thorough analysis of Kelly’s life and time spent serving as Trump’s chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019. Kelly served as Homeland Security Secretary under Trump in the past. For the story, Schmidt draws on hundreds of in-depth interviews with former members of the Trump administration and people who knew Kelly.

Trump issued a threat to North Korea eight days after Kelly took over as chief of staff, saying North Korea would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” In September 2017, when Trump made his first speech to the U.N. In The General Assembly, he vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if Kim, who he called “Rocket Man,” kept threatening to use force.

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“What scared Kelly even more than the tweets was the fact that behind closed doors in the Oval Office, Trump continued to talk as if he wanted to go to war. He cavalierly discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea, saying that if he took such an action, the administration could blame someone else for it to absolve itself of responsibility,” according to the new section of the book.

Kelly briefed Trump at the White House on the potential for war between the United States and North Korea as well as the grave repercussions of such a battle. Kelly summoned the military’s senior officials for the same. However, according to Schmidt, the discussion of the potential death toll had “no impact on Trump.”

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Then, Trump “would turn back to the possibility of war, including at one point raising to Kelly the possibility of launching a preemptive military attack against North Korea,” Schmidt said. 

According to the afterword, Kelly informed Trump that he would require congressional authorization before launching a pre-emptive strike, which “baffled and annoyed” Trump.