Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) on Sunday highlighted the need for President Trump to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after a false alarm about a missile attack sent the islands into a state of panic over the weekend.
“I’ve been calling on President Trump to directly negotiate with North Korea, to sit across the table from Kim Jong Un, work out the differences so that we can build a pathway towards denuclearization, to remove this threat,” Gabbard told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Her remarks come after an erroneous alert, sent to over a million cellphones across the state, directed people to seek shelter from an incoming ballistic missile threat.
Gabbard stressed that this fear of an attack underscores the need for the two world leaders to meet and address the heightened tensions.
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“We have got to get to the underlying issue here of why are the people of Hawaii and this country facing a nuclear threat coming from North Korea today, and what is this president doing urgently to eliminate that threat?” she said.
She said Trump needs to drop his preconditions for attending the meeting, arguing that making Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons program before coming to the negotiating table is “unrealistic.”
“They see it as the only deterrent against the U.S. coming in and overthrowing their regime there,” she said.
The false alert came after “an employee pushed the wrong button,” Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D) told CNN.
Gabbard, who said she was “angry” about the false alarm, blamed “decades of failed [U.S.] leadership” for leaving the people of Hawaii possibly in the crosshairs of a conflict with North Korea.