"If you knew what I knew about what we could do to the leadership of North Korea, you wouldn't sleep very well," Sen. Lindsey Graham said. | John Shinkle/POLITICO China behind North Korea’s latest behavior, Graham says

The Chinese government is behind North Korea’s condemnation of the U.S. after the latest round of denuclearization talks, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday, mixing the Washington-Beijing trade dispute with news of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s talks in Pyongyang.

North Korea, in a statement released Saturday hours after talks with Pompeo wrapped, called the negotiations “regrettable” and accused the U.S. of making “gangster-like” demands, according to The Associated Press. Earlier, Pompeo had told reporters that the talks had been “productive” and had progressed “in good faith.”


“I see China's hands all over this. We’re in a fight with China,” Graham (R-S.C.), a Senate Armed Services Committee member, told “Fox News Sunday.” “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.”

The tough talk from North Korea, for whom China is the chief trade partner and international patron, came days after President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on China, prompting retaliatory tariffs from Beijing. Trump has accused China, which runs a significant annual trade surplus with the U.S., of unfair trade practices that he has said must come to an end.

The tit-for-tat tariffs between the U.S. and China have prompted global concern over the possibility of a trade war between the two massive economies.

Graham, among the most hawkish lawmakers in the Senate, also issued a warning to North Korea. In talks with Pompeo, Kim Yong Chol, a senior North Korean official, suggested the secretary of state might not have slept well given the weight of the denuclearization talks, to which Pompeo responded: “I slept just fine.”

“To our North Korean friends — can’t say the word friend yet — you asked Pompeo did he sleep well,” Graham said. “If you knew what I knew about what we could do to the leadership of North Korea, you wouldn't sleep very well.”

On another foreign policy matter, Graham suggested that Trump push back vigorously next week on the issue of Russia’s interference in U.S. elections when he meets next week with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin, and Putin himself, have repeatedly denied having interfered with the 2016 election — a denial Trump has at times been slow to reject even though the U.S. intelligence community has long said Russia was indeed behind the interference campaign.

“When Putin denies that he was involved in our election in 2016, reject the denial, challenge him,” Graham said. “Don’t let him deny the obvious. They’re still trying to disrupt the 2018 election cycle.”