Coons: Senate may have to ‘support military action’

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on Saturday warned that Congress may soon have to consider the possibility of authorizing military action against North Korea.

Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that senators need to be “prepared” to potentially “support military action” against Pyongyang. 

{mosads}”I think all of us in the Senate need to be prepared to step up and take on our constitutional responsibility which may in some cases be to support military action,” Coons said in an interview with CNN.

Coons also addressed President Trump’s Friday tweet, in which he said that North Korea “disrespected the wishes of China & its highly respected President” when it launched a ballistic missile.

North Korea disrespected the wishes of China & its highly respected President when it launched, though unsuccessfully, a missile today. Bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2017

“What President Trump is doing here is recognizing that his only constructive path forward on North Korea is to engage China, to make sure that China sees this as being as much their problem as our problem,” Coons told CNN.

The lawmaker, however, stressed that the best way to conduct diplomacy “is not through Twitter, but through leadership by the national security team of the Trump administration.”

“This is no longer reality TV,” he said. “This is reality. And dangerous reality.”

When asked if Coons would publicly support a potential first strike against North Korea, the lawmaker said that U.S. is “not there yet.”

“We’re not there yet and I’m not going to address the hypothetical. But I do think we have to take seriously the prospect that Kim Jong Un has nuclear weapons, is developing ballistic missile capability that could reach beyond South Korea and Japan and hit American territory, and that he has publicly stated an intention to attack the United States,” he said.