PENSCACOLA, Fla. — Hillary Clinton said Friday it was time for a “rethinking” of America’s strategy for North Korea following the regime’s latest test of a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump and his campaign chief, meanwhile, refused to outline the Republican presidential candidate’s plans for defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The New York billionaire did vow to deploy military muscle to attack America’s enemies if provoked.
Largely ignoring North Korea, he noted a recent incident in which he said Iranian ships were “toying with” an American destroyer near the Strait of Hormuz. During a Trump presidency, he promised at a Friday night rally in Pensacola, Fla., ships trying to provoke the U.S. “will be shot out of the water.”
In New York, Clinton was focused on the North Korean threat after meeting with a bipartisan group of national security experts.
The former secretary of state said she would seek to impose tougher sanctions on the communist nation, arguing the latest test provides an opening to pressure China, which has been tepid in its response to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
“I think we have an opening here that we haven’t had for the last several years that I intend to do everything I can to take advantage of,” Clinton said.
Clinton spoke hours after Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, pressed repeatedly on Trump’s plans for the region, said only, “He wouldn’t do what’s being done now.”
“He’s not going to reveal all of his plans and he’s made that very clear. And maybe someone can ask him in a debate,” Conway told “CBS This Morning.” ”But the fact is that this entire world would be put on notice that there’s a strong leader in the White House.”
North Korea’s atomic test was its fifth, and the second in eight months. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the detonation, which Seoul estimated was the North’s biggest ever in explosive yield, was an act of “fanatic recklessness” and a sign that leader Kim Jong Un “is spiraling out of control.”
Trump used the North Korean development to attack Clinton. “North Korea, like so many other things, is one more Hillary Clinton failure,” he said in Pensacola.
He did not say whether he had a plan to address North Korea’s claim the test will allow it to build an array of stronger, smaller and lighter nuclear weapons.
