Corker urges Senate to examine Trump's 'authority to use nuclear weapons'

After months of questioning President Donald Trump's temperament and fitness for office, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., announced Wednesday that he would convene a hearing to examine the president's authority to use nuclear weapons.

The announcement of the Nov.14 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Corker chairs, amounts to a significant escalation of what has so far been a war of merely words between the powerful Republican and his party's standard-bearer.

"A number of members both on and off our committee have raised questions about the authorities of the legislative and executive branches with respect to war making, the use of nuclear weapons, and conducting foreign policy overall," Corker said in a statement Wednesday.

The announcement came less than a day after Trump delivered a combative speech aimed at North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, in which the president called North Korea a "dark fantasy" and a "military cult." Speaking in South Korea, Trump accused the hermit kingdom of being founded on "a deranged belief in the leader's destiny to rule as parent-protector over a conquered Korean Peninsula and an enslaved Korean people."

Trump's insistence on engaging in brinkmanship with the nuclear-armed dictator has stunned many military and foreign policy professionals, who fear the president's ego could lead the country down a path to war.

UCJ, UNILORIN.