House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) trashed President Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts Tuesday at a summit with North Korea’s Kimg Jong-un in Singapore, claiming he had conceded too much to the regime.
The would-be Speaker of the House also complained that Trump had insulted American allies and sidelined the experts at the State Department.
Pelosi’s full statement, as reported by Alex Moe of NBC News, is as follows:
Nuclear nonproliferation is a pillar of America’s national security. We respect any serious and real diplomatic efforts to achieve that goal on the Korean peninsula. Apparently, the President just handed Kim Jong-un concessions in exchange for vague promises that do not approach a clear and comprehensive pathway to denuclearization and non-proliferation.
In his haste to reach an agreement, President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo. The millions of families currently living in fear of nuclear weapons in the region deserve strong and smart leadership built-in diplomacy and engagement with our regional partners and allies.
The president’s marginalization of the State Department and his habitual disparaging of our allies as demonstrated at the G7 Forum hinders a lasting, stable pathway to peace.
Pelosi did not stipulate which concessions Trump had made. The U.S. did not relax sanctions –as the Obama administration had with Iran merely to start negotiations — and U.S. allies in the region were generally encouraged by the historic the talks.
On Tuesday, South Korea praised the summit: “”[The] Agreement will be recorded as a historic event that has helped break down the last remaining Cold War legacy on earth. It is a great victory achieved by both the United States and the two Koreas, and a huge step forward for people across the world.”
In 2015, Pelosi called the Iran deal a “diplomatic masterpiece.” A decade earlier, she traveled to Syria to hold talks with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who later slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people.
Senate Democrats issued a list of demands last week that they said any agreement with North Korea would have to meet to earn their support. The Iran deal violated every one of them.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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