House and Senate Republican leaders offered cautious praise for President Trump’s agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and said it’s a deal that so far lacks clarity or guarantees.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the agreement is “an historic first step” that commits the U.S. and North Korea to keep trying for a deal to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
“Resolving this 65-year old international challenge will take a great deal of hard work,” McConnell said.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., echoed McConnell’s conditional praise. “Only time will tell if North Korea is serious this time, and in the meantime we must continue to apply maximum economic pressure,” Ryan said.
“As negotiations now advance, there is only one acceptable final outcome: complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization,” Ryan said. “We must always be clear that we are dealing with a brutal regime with a long history of deceit.”
But Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was even more cautious than that, and said it’s hard to tell what was achieved in the summit.
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“While I am glad the president and Kim Jong Un were able to meet, it is difficult to determine what of concrete nature has occurred,” Corker said. Corker said he would summon Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to share his insights” at an upcoming hearing on the deal.
