Gallego won’t give Trump credit for ‘acting like an adult’ after MOAB order
Apr 14, 2017, 7:21 PM | Updated: 8:12 pm
Rep: Gallego on Trump: I'm not going to give him a credit for "finally acting like an adult 10% of the time" https://t.co/A9bKInyYnO
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) April 14, 2017
PHOENIX — Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego will not give President Donald Trump “credit for finally acting like an adult” for his decision to use a non-nuclear weapon to target an Islamic State base this week.
In an interview with CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Friday, Gallego said he will not give Trump “credit for finally acting like an adult 10 percent of the time” for the president’s order to use the “mother of all bombs,” the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S. military, to strike an Islamic State tunnel complex in eastern Afghanistan.
Gallego added that the president should now be focused on how to handle relations with North Korea. which signaled on Thursday that the country “will go to war” if provoked.
“He should actually be acting presidential, working the world of diplomacy, not spending as much time down in Florida, being in the situation room and actually talking to the generals and our diplomats who actually understand what is going on in that peninsula and actually study up, because this is important,” Gallego said.
“We are dealing with a lot of countries that really hate each other that have nuclear weapons and he is tweeting at the opposition and potentially getting us into a shooting war,” he added. “So I’m not going to give him credit for at least curtailing a little bit of that when he should be doing that from day one.”
Gallego said the United States should be working to “de-escalate” relations with North Korea, instead of provoking its leaders.
“I think the most important thing right now when you’re dealing with a nuclear-armed country with a psychopath as dictator, that you see in North Korea, what we need to do is de-escalate,” Gallego said. “This is not the time to, you know, try to act like a tough guy.”
Gallego’s comments on North Korea came in response to one of the president’s tweets calling the country a “menace.”
Had a very good call last night with the President of China concerning the menace of North Korea.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2017
Gallego said comments like these could “create an escalation that could be very dangerous and tip over into a hot war involving nuclear weapons which is — again, nobody wins when that occurs.”
In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, North Korea’s vice foreign minister Han Song Ryol advised the U.S. to not provoke North Korea, saying “We will go to war if they choose” and claiming Trump is the one “making trouble” with his “aggressive” tweets.
BREAKING: North Korea's vice foreign minister says President Trump is "making trouble" with "aggressive" tweets.
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 14, 2017
On Friday, China issued a stern warning to the U.S. and North Korea, urging “all parties to refrain from inflammatory or threatening statements or deeds to prevent irreversible damage to the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” according to the Washington Post.
