President Donald Trump has taken a harder line on China's dealings with North Korea following the failed release of American prisoner Otto Warmbier.
“While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out,” he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. “At least I know China tried!”
This stands in contrast to Trump's optimistic tone back in April when he hoped China would be instrumental in de-escalating North Korean aggression.
“Look, I’ve been talking about China for years,” he told Fox News host Martha MacCallum during an interview. “Now, I speak nicely about China because I really do believe they’re trying to help out with respect to North Korea.”
Following the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who returned home in a coma after spending a year in a North Korean prison, instilled most likely by severe beating, Trump called it a "total disgrace."
“It’s a total disgrace what happened to Otto,” Trump said on Tuesday. “It should never, ever be allowed to happen. And frankly, if he were brought home sooner, I think the results would have been a lot different.”
The family of Warmbier blamed the Obama administration for failing to secure their son in time.
"We’ve been to Washington, D.C. over a dozen times. We met everyone in the past administration from John Kerry to the Swedish ambassador, Sternloff, who lives in Pyongyang," said Fred Warmbier. "He came in town, we met his aide when he came in town. We’ve met our senators, our congressmen. We’ve worked with Governor Richardson.
“Those were our efforts. We relied on this false premise that they would treat Otto fairly and would let him go,” Warmbier said. “Otto was held as a war criminal. They termed his confinement as a war criminal.”
“We did what we could. We tried to stay low. We were advised that it was important that you don’t upset the North Koreans. We followed that logic. There came a time that that doesn’t seem to have any impact. So we went public with an interview on Tucker Carlson’s show, and then did a couple of written pieces, and then very quickly we have Otto home,” he said.
