On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the trade war between the United States and China caused China to make North Korea say Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was “gangster-like” during the nuclear negotiations.

Graham said, “I see China’s hands all over this. We’re in a fight with China. We buy $500 billion worth of goods from the Chinese. They buy $100 billion from us. They cheat, and President Trump wants to change the economic relationship with China.”

He continued, “So if I were President Trump, I would not let China use North Korea to back me off of the trade dispute. We’ve got more bullets than they do when it comes to trade. We sell them 100 billion, they sell is 500 billion, we can hurt them more than can hurt us. All we are looking for is for them to stop cheating when it comes to trade. If there is no doubt in my mind that it’s the Chinese pulling a North Koreans back. And to our North Korean friends, I can’t say the word ‘friend’ yet. You asked Pompeo: ‘Did he sleep well?’ If you knew what I knew about what we could do to the leadership of North Korea, you wouldn’t sleep very well.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN