'Our Job Is to Scare People' about North Korea: NBC's Williams

Brian Williams is also known for describing U.S. Tomahawk missile hitting Syria as "beautiful."

Brian Williams, MSNBC's chief anchor, told a debate panel Tuesday that “our job tonight actually is to scare people to death” about North Korea.

The debate, which focused on heightened tensions between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea included MSNBC contributor Malcolm Nance and TV journalist and reporter Andrea Mitchell.

Mitchell, responding in a manner that neither affirmed or refuted Williams' remarks, simply shook her head.. She'd later report on potential war casualties on the Korean peninsula if the United States engaged in ballistic missile exchanges.

Last April, the host of "The 11th Hour with Brian Williams," couldn't contain his excitement as a Pentagon video showed several Tomahawk missiles launching from U.S. Navy destroyers and slamming into a Syrian airfield, saying on-air, “We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean.”

While watching the images Williams added that he was “tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: 'I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.'”

Defense Secretary James Mattis warned that the DPRK is risking “the end of its regime and the destruction of its people,” if it did not stop developing nuclear weapons days after President Donald Trump warned the country any threat to the United States would be met with “fire and fury.”

The U.S. has over 37,500 troops on the imposed border between north and south Korea, which was one country before the U.S. war on the peninsula from 1950-1954 that left the people of Korea divided. The U.S. and South Korean armed forces also conduct war games off the coast of the region on a regular basis.