GOP urges Trump to keep up maximum pressure campaign after canceling North Korea summit

President Trump’s decision to call off his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un drew praise from Republicans who urged the Trump administration to continue with its maximum pressure campaign, but a muted response from Democrats, some of whom said North Korea’s recent escalation in rhetoric should have been expected.

“North Korea has a long history of demanding concessions merely to negotiate,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in a statement. “While past administrations of both parties have fallen for this ruse, I commend the president for seeing through Kim Jong Un’s fraud. As I have long said, our maximum-pressure campaign on North Korea must continue.”

The White House on Thursday released an open letter to Kim canceling the meeting, which was set to take place in Singapore on June 12. The president cited the “tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement” in explaining his decision to back out of the summit.

[READ: Trump’s letter to Kim Jong Un canceling North Korea summit]

That’s an apparently reference to a statement carried by North Korea’s state news agency from, Choe Son Hui, one of North Korea’s vice ministers of Foreign Affairs, who slammed Vice President Mike Pence for “unbridled and impudent” remarks about denuclearization and threatened a nuclear showdown. “Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States,” Choe said.

Republicans said Trump made the right call, noting it is evident Kim is not interested in giving up Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.

“Kim Jun Un, in the words of a wise man ‘Congratulations, you just played yourself’. Withdrawing from talks with #NKorea is 100% the right decision. #KJU doesn’t want a deal. He has deliberately sabotaged the talks over the last two weeks & was setting us up to take the blame,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., advised the Trump administration to push forward with its maximum pressure campaign against North Korea and urged U.S. allies to back the U.S. government.

“Our goal is to peacefully end North Korea’s nuclear threats. The administration should continue to look for opportunities while applying maximum diplomatic and financial pressure against Kim Jong Un. Our allies — including South Korea and Japan — need to stand with the United States. There can be no daylight between us,” Royce said in a statement.

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said the U.S. should maintain a goal during any future discussions with Pyongyang of “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

“President Trump has made the right decision to cancel the summit with Kim Jong Un until North Korea is ready to act in good faith to fully denuclearize,” he said. “We must double down on our strategy of maximum pressure and engagement.”

Democrats were much more hesitant to applaud the decision, and instead, many said the Trump administration should not be surprised by North Korea’s recent behavior and rhetoric as the summit drew near.

“The art of diplomacy is a lot harder than the art of the deal. It’s amazing to me that the administration is somehow shocked the North Koreans are acting as North Koreans act,” Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, referring to Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said any future discussions or meeting between North Korea and the U.S. should only occur if Pyongyang eliminates its nuclear capabilities.

“The fear many of us had was that the summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un would be a great show that produced nothing enduring. If a summit is to be reconstituted, the United States must show strength and achieve a concrete, verifiable, enduring elimination of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear capabilities,” Schumer during remarks on the Senate floor.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the summit’s cancellation likely resulted in enthusiasm from Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton, and rejected any notion that Trump was shrewd in his strategy with North Korea.

“This is a setback. This is an error,” he tweeted. “This is what happens when amateurs are combined with warmongers. This is NOT secretly smart and clever, and any pundit or politician who even flirts with that idea is deeply, deeply unserious.”

After a year of escalating rhetoric and tensions between Trump and Kim, there was believed to have been a breakthrough in relations between the U.S. and Pyongyang when the president accepted an invitation to meet with Kim to discuss the rogue regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.

North Korea recently released U.S. citizens who had been detained in North Korea, which the White House described as a gesture of goodwill ahead of the June 12 summit. Pyongyang also vowed to close its primary nuclear weapons test site and took steps Thursday to demolish the site.

But North Korea also threatened to cancel the summit this month when the U.S. and South Korea began holding joint military exercises.