[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 36 (Wednesday, February 27, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1498-S1499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              North Korea

  Now, the Trump administration is in the middle of two crucial 
negotiations with foreign capitals, the result of which will have 
ramifications for decades.
  In Vietnam, President Trump will meet with Chairman Kim to continue 
discussions over the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, while at 
the same time administration officials continue negotiations with 
Beijing over a major trade pact. In both instances, President Trump 
would have the best chance of having success if he articulated clear 
objectives and maintained a hard line until those objectives were 
achieved.
  For a time, that approach--the right approach--seemed to hold sway at 
the White House, as sanctions and tariffs brought both North Korea and 
China to the negotiating table. Recently, however, President Trump 
seems headed

[[Page S1499]]

down the path of capitulation on both North Korea and China, prepared 
to trade away our leverage in exchange for flimsy agreements. The 
President can't seem to stick to a policy, even when it is beginning to 
work. So eager is he for that quick photo op.
  There is an old expression that March comes in like a lion and goes 
out like a lamb. Well, based on all reports, when it comes to North 
Korea and China, spring is coming a little early at the White House. 
President Trump, on both China and North Korea, came in like a lion, 
with tough rhetoric and hard-line policies, but now President Trump is 
poised to go out like a lamb, meekly accepting half-baked agreements 
from both capitals for the sheer sake of it.
  In North Korea the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy has been 
the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the 
Korean Peninsula, as well as the cessation of human rights abuses by 
the brutal, despotic, and murderous Kim regime. But just this weekend, 
before leaving for Hanoi, President Trump said: ``I don't want to rush 
anybody; as long as there's no testing, we're happy.'' That is a far 
cry from the complete denuclearization that he called for in the past, 
and it signals a dangerous softening of our position before the talks 
even started.
  The irony of ironies is that for all the talk of ``maximum pressure'' 
and ``fire and fury,'' President Trump's stance on North Korea may wind 
up far weaker than Hillary Clinton's. I know he doesn't like to hear 
that, but the truth is the truth.
  President Trump seems more interested in touting his warm 
relationship with Chairman Kim as an accomplishment in and of itself. 
President Trump's calling a brutal autocrat a friend on Twitter is no 
substitute for actually achieving something for the American people in 
Hanoi.
  I hate to say it, but it would be absolutely incredible and even 
pathetic if President Trump were giving in to North Korea for the sake 
of a photo op to knock Michael Cohen's hearing from the front page, but 
if the past behavior of the President is any guide, something like that 
is, unfortunately, totally conceivable.