Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., says American diplomacy has struggled to stop the North Korean missile threat and that negotiations under the Trump administration have “certainly” failed due to lack of staffing and appointments at the State Department.
“North Korea has been a threat for years,” Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday evening on CNN. “How did we allow North Korea to get this far in terms of having nuclear weapons?”
SOON: I’ll join @ErinBurnett on @OutFrontCNN to discuss #NorthKorea and more.
— Eliot Engel (@RepEliotEngel) August 9, 2017
“We are facing a 31 percent cut in State Department funds,” Engel said. “We are facing cuts in embassy security and everything else. There’s no ambassador to South Korea. There’s no undersecretary.”
North Korea made news of its own on Wednesday.
The country plans “to attack waters near Guam by mid-August then wait for commander in chief’s order,” the Associated Press tweeted Wednesday.
Trump vowed on Tuesday to respond to continued North Korean aggression with “fire and fury.”
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump said while in New Jersey. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
On Tuesday, Engel stated Trump “undermined American credibility by drawing an absurd red line.” He called the president’s actions “unhinged.”
