Just hours after North Korea’s failed missile test, a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee voiced concern over the ways in which President Donald Trump responds to such challenges from foreign adversaries.
“The President seems to go back and forth. It’s kind of fly by the seat of your pants,” said Rep. Eliot Engel.
Speaking live with Erin Burnett, the Democrat from New York referred to North Korea’s regular missile tests — the nation has attempted multiple launches since Trump’s inauguration — as “a very serious situation.”
Additionally, Engel emphasized the value in partnering with allied nations in hopes of avoiding a disastrous, perhaps even nuclear, incident.
“We need to work with China. China’s the only country that has some kind of influence on North Korea,” he told the “OutFront” host. “We need to do that without saber-rattling, without changing what we’re going to do, without trying to talking tough one day and trying to reach out the next day.”
As Trump boasts about an “armada” and the threat of “a major conflict,” Engel said such words are “not helpful.”
“You see some erratic behavior on the part of North Korea — you don’t want to play into that,” he said.
As an administration, Engel suggest the President and his staff lack consistency.
“I just think it’s all over the place,” he told Burnett. “What we need to do is think about what we say before we say it.”