Sen. Lindsey Graham asserted that President Trump won’t allow the “crazy man in North Korea” to launch a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the U.S., after the pariah state, led by Kim Jong Un, conducted yet another missile test on Tuesday.
The insult, seemingly directed at Kim, came as the South Carolina Republican senator warned that North Korea is putting itself in greater jeopardy with every test it runs in defiance of international pressure to get it to halt its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
Pyongyang, he said during an interview on CNN, is “miscalculating” Trump, who Graham said favors diplomacy, like himself, despite Trump’s previous threats of “fire and fury” against North Korean provocations.
“He is ready, if necessary, to destroy this regime, to protect America,” Graham told CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. “And I hope the regime understands.”
Senator Lindsey Graham on North Korea’s latest missile launch: “If we have to go to war to stop this, we will” https://t.co/BhXMNycVFN https://t.co/GOlCDypp4M— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) November 28, 2017
That message, Graham added, should not be lost on China, which he painted as a critical partner in negotiations.
Graham’s interview followed Trump’s brief comments in response to the North Korean missile launch, which the Pentagon said was an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew into the Sea of Japan.
“I will only tell you that we will take care of it,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
The U.S. military said that the missile posed no threat to the U.S., but experts, analyzing data about the missile’s flight, surmised that such a missile had the longest potential flight range yet — long enough to reach the East Coast of the U.S.
Ultimately, Graham, a noted Republican hawk and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. will deal with any credible threat from North Korea.
“We’ll take care of it. Not the United Nations, not China, we’ll take care of it,” Graham said. “And my hope is that North Korea will realize that he is serious about this. The president is not going to allow North Korea to have a nuclear weapon in their hands that can hit America with an ICBM that can make it to the United States.”
