Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island said Friday he fears President Donald Trump may bomb North Korea so that he can "build up his popularity," rather than for the purpose of protecting national security interests, the Washington Examiner reported.
"What I fear is, he sort of got a political bump, he got a political bump from the Syria air strike [and] the mother of all bombs strike in Afghanistan," Cicilline told MSNBC on Friday.
Cicilline, who co-chairs the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, stressed the airstrike Trump ordered last week against Syria "didn't even do much damage." The U.S. "mother of all bombs" strike against Afghanistan on Thursday reportedly killed 36 ISIS militants.
"We don't want the president to be making decisions where he just sort of thinks more bombs are the way to build up his popularity, but rather they're making decisions based on the national security interests of the United States and the long-term safety and security of the American people," Cicilliine said.
Instead, he said officials should seek a diplomatic solution to the threat posed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has recently been testing what are believed to be nuclear missiles and has warned the U.S. over its military warships in the Korean peninsula.
"A preemptive strike, if it were to happen, is likely to ignite a very serious conflict, a war, and maybe even a nuclear war," he said.
"It would expose American troops on the [Korean] peninsula to tremendous danger," he added. "The appropriate course is to really to reduce the rhetoric and try to de-escalate this and continue to use all the levers of diplomatic [and] economic power to try to achieve the right results here."
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