President Donald Trump’s fire and fury threat against North Korea was not only justified, but it worked, Rep. Pete King said Thursday.
President Donald Trump’s “fire and fury” threat against North Korea was not only justified, but it worked, Rep. Pete King said Thursday.
“There is a history to North Korea, ” the New York Republican told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. ” [Dwight D.] Eisenhower specifically threatened to use nuclear weapons. This isn’t unusual or unprecedented and it worked. It caused North Korea to back down.”
King said he has no inside intelligence about North Korea, but he commented that the United States would only launch preemptive strikes if it had “very convincing evidence that North Korea was about to launch an attack. To me that’s the only way it would be considered.”
On Thursday, North Korea announced a detailed plan to launch a salvo of ballistic missiles toward Guam, a major military hub that serves as home to U. S. bombers. If the strike occurs, it would be the North’s most provocative missile launch to date.
King said he believes Trump, national security adviser John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis are “on the same page” when it comes to North Korea, but he also thinks people are reading too much into what Kelly says or doesn’t say.
Switching to domestic affairs, King said he does believe that members of Congress led Trump to believe that healthcare reform could happen more quickly than it did, but as for now, he thinks the Obamacare repeal should be put aside in favor of tax cuts and jobs.
“I don’t even think we should be focusing in tax reform, ” said King.”Let’s get some quick tax cuts the way [President Ronald] Reagan did in ’81. Reagan waited five years, from 1981 to 1986, before he went from tax cuts to tax reform. We can get tax cuts in.”
