Sen. Lindsey Graham said North Korea’s recent condemnation of the United States has “China’s hands all over” it.
Following two days of meetings with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, North Korean officials accused the U.S. of making “gangster-like demands” on denuclearization, calling the talks with Pompeo “regrettable,” and “robber-like.”
Graham, in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” said the Chinese were behind the North Korean statements, noting that America is “in a fight” with China.
“We buy $500 billion worth of goods from the Chinese, they buy 100 billion from us. They cheat, and President Trump wants to change the economic relationship with China. So if I were President Trump, I would not let China use North Korea to back me off of the trade dispute,” the South Carolina Republican said. “We’ve got more bullets than they do when it comes to trade. We sell them 100 billion, they sell us 500 billion, we can hurt them more than they have hurt us, and all we are looking for is for them to stop shooting when it comes to trade.”
China is North Korea’s largest trade partner and wields a great deal of influence on its neighbor’s foreign relations.
In North Korea’s statement, the spokesperson indicated that the team had expected a “balanced implementation” of the terms agreed to by Kim Jong Un and President Trump during their historic summit in Singapore last month.
An ABC News report said the U.S. negotiating team expected such a response from Pyongyang, and suspect it is a merely a negotiating tactic. “We pushed them really hard to live up to the commitments of the president, and they may be reacting to save face,” an unnamed source told the outlet.
Pompeo dismissed the North Koreans’ tough talk on Sunday, saying in Japan, “We had detailed, substantive conversations about the next steps toward a fully verified and complete denuclearization,”
