WASHINGTON -- Members of both major parties criticized President Donald Trump's handling of North Korea on Sunday after the president tweeted that he has "confidence" in Kim Jong Un and that he smiled at the regime's criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a military veteran who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, cited the Memorial Day holiday in taking issue with Trump's message.
"It's Memorial Day Weekend and you're taking a shot at Biden while praising a dictator," Kinzinger tweeted. "This is just plain wrong."
Another Republican, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, said she "certainly wouldn't trust" Kim. Ernst, who is also a veteran and serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she was disturbed by North Korea's recent missile test and by Trump's reaction.
"I think Japan does have reason to be concerned, and I am concerned as well," she said on CNN's State of the Union.
On CNN, Ernst added that she understands Trump "has a job to do in negotiating, but we do need to push-back on North Korea and make sure that they are following U.N. guidelines."
The issue arose after Trump, who is on a state visit to Japan, tweeted that North Korea's recent missile tests were not of concern, contradicting a recent statement by national security adviser John Bolton.
"North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me," the president tweeted. "I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that's sending me a signal?"
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that when Trump met with Kim last year in Singapore and this year in Hanoi, Vietnam, "he was handing North Korea something that country needed, which was legitimacy."
"And the way diplomacy works -- the way deals work -- is you give someone something in return for something," Buttigieg said on ABC's This Week. "It hasn't worked at all."
Others argued that Trump is acting strategically in his dealings with the authoritarian regime.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close Trump ally, said that he was "glad the president is engaging" Kim and that the president was "trying to give North Korea some space to come back to the table and end this."
"Like every other president, he's trying hard to stop the advance of nuclear armament in North Korea," Graham said on Fox News Sunday.
But Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., argued that Trump's predecessors, including President Barack Obama, had not tried hard and were too willing "to accept a phony deal."
"When you look at the situation President Trump inherited, whether you're talking about North Korea, whether you're talking about Iran, whether you're talking about the tremendous hole that the Obama administration dug with respect to our armed forces around the world, the president is doing the right thing," Cheney said on This Week.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that Trump wasn't siding with Kim in his tweet, "but I think they agree in their assessment of former Vice President Joe Biden."
Pressed on whether Trump is taking Kim's word about Biden, Sanders said the president "doesn't need somebody else to give him an assessment of Joe Biden. He's given his own assessment a number of times. ... The president watched [Biden] and his administration with President Obama fail for eight years. He's come in in 2½ [years], he's cleaned up a lot of the messes that were left behind. We shouldn't even be in the position that we're in to have to deal with North Korea at the level we are if they had done their job in the first place."
As for Biden, his campaign on Sunday pointed to a statement it made last week in response to remarks by North Korea's state-run news agency that Biden has a low IQ, which itself was a response to Biden's criticism of the regime.
"Given Vice President Biden's record of standing up for American values and interests, it's no surprise that North Korea would prefer that Donald Trump remain in the White House," Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said.
SUMO TROPHY
While members of both parties were on the Sunday morning news shows, Trump was winding down a day of tourism in Japan, which is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time.
The president and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe played golf for about 2½ hours at Mobara Country Club in Chiba, posing for selfies and having a lunch of cheeseburgers made with U.S. beef -- symbolic, because Japan reopened U.S. beef imports recently.
Abe then introduced Trump to sumo wrestling inside the Ryogoku Kokugikan, a stadium near the Sumida River in Tokyo. It was the last day of an annual grand tournament, and about 11,500 fans were in the crowd for the championship event.
Trump took in five matches, some of which lasted only a few seconds.
After the final match, Abe presented the champion, 25-year-old Asanoyama, with the Prime Minister's Cup, a roughly 4-foot-tall trophy. Trump then entered the ring, bowed slightly and presented Asanoyama with his own trophy: the President's Cup, a similarly sized trophy made in the U.S. for the occasion and weighing more than 60 pounds. The crowd gasped audibly when its covering was removed.
Trump read from a scroll, the "Certificate of commemoration Asanoyama," in honor of the winner, a wrestler in the lower ranks of Japan's top tier of sumo who had sealed his victory the day before.
"In honor of your outstanding achievement as sumo grand champion, I hereby award you the President's Cup," Trump said.
The U.S. cup was the first of its kind.
"That was an incredible evening at sumo," Trump said Sunday night. "We brought that beautiful trophy, which you'll have hopefully for many hundreds of years."
MEETING THE EMPEROR
The state visit continued early today as Trump became the first world leader to meet Japan's new emperor, Naruhito, who ascended to the throne May 1.
Trump's "state call" opened with handshakes and greetings from Naruhito, and his wife, Empress Masako. As he approached the emperor, Trump said, "How are you? Thank you very much." The first lady told the empress, "Nice to meet you."
The president was the center of attention at a grand outdoor welcome ceremony where he took a solo walk down red carpets, reviewing Japanese troops as the guest of honor.
Trump was invited to the ceremony not by the emperor, but by Abe, who is working to maintain good relations with the president as he threatens to impose potentially devastating tariffs on Japan's auto industry.
Trump said he wants to get "the balance of trade ... straightened out rapidly."
"I think we will be announcing some things probably in August that will be very good for both countries," Trump said, adding that Japan has "been doing much more business with us, and we'd like to do a little bit more business in the reverse."
Abe has also offered to open communications with Iran, and Trump said today that he would support him. Iran has refused Trump's invitation to call the White House amid rising tensions over Iran's nuclear program and activities in the region.
"I know that the prime minister and Japan have a very good relationship with Iran, so we'll see what happens," Trump said. "The prime minister's already spoken to me about that, and I do believe that Iran would like to talk. And if they'd like to talk, we'd like to talk also. We'll see what happens ... nobody wants to see terrible things happen, especially me."
Information for this article was contributed by Felicia Sonmez, Paige Winfield Cunningham, Ashley Parker, Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi of The Washington Post; by Katie Rogers of The New York Times; by Darlene Superville and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press; and by Jennifer Epstein and Shannon Pettypiece of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 05/27/2019