Adam Schiff: ‘More Than Fair’ to Give Trump Some Credit for North Korea

By Mairead McArdle

Monday, April 30, 2018

Representative Adam Schiff admitted on Sunday that President Trump can be credited in part for the progress toward peace in the Korean Peninsula.

“I think it’s more than fair to say that the combination of the president’s unpredictability and indeed, his bellicosity had something to do with the North Koreans deciding to come to the table,” the Democrat from California told ABC over the weekend.

However, the outspoken critic of the Trump administration cautioned that the president may want to hold off on “hanging out the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner” in case we enter a “confrontational phase.”

“He may not want the full blame if things go south, so he ought to be a little circumspect about that,” Schiff explained.

Schiff believes the relationship with North Korea is “likely” to become “confrontational,” and at that point it will be “very important” to be on the same page as our allies South Korea and Japan, he said.

“Otherwise North Korea will pick us apart, and this president isn’t particularly good at lashing up with our allies,” the congressman said.

Schiff is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and has raised his profile by being a hard dissenter from committee Republicans when it comes to the Russia investigation.

Last week, he blasted the committee’s report stating they found no evidence of collusion, accusing the committee’s GOP majority of taking a “fundamentally flawed approach” and not “seriously investigating.”

He has claimed the committee has an “abundance of non-public information” that includes evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia as well as obstruction of justice by the president.

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The Republican National Committee blasted the vocal congressman in February for his hundreds of television spots since Trump’s inauguration.

“It’s clear that Schiff, who recently had no national profile, has used the House’s Russia investigation as a self-serving platform to increase his visibility and is incentivized to prolong, dramatize, and overhype the investigation so he can continue preening for the cameras,” the RNC said in a statement.