WASHINGTON – Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) appeared on CNN’s “New Day” Thursday morning to discuss health care and North Korea’s destabilizing actions. Comments from the interview are below, and video from the first segment can be found here.

Later, Sen. Johnson and host Chris Cuomo discussed the way Obamacare has driven up health care costs and insurance premiums — and how to reduce premiums. Video of their discussion can be found here.

On Obamacare

“Obamacare is a mess. That's not going away, and we have responsibility to do everything we can to fix that.”

“We need to come up with the policies that reduce gross premiums. That's what we'll be talking about. We need to be courageous, and we need to be honest in terms of what the root cause analysis is. That's in the lap of Congress, in the lap of the House and the Senate.”

On North Korea ?

“For decades on a bipartisan basis, presidents (and) members of Congress have been saying it's unacceptable that North Korea has nuclear weapons or ballistic missile technology to deliver them. Well, they have nuclear weapons now, and they’re fast approaching the point where they’ll have an intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver it to America.”

“We need to pressure (China), because China has not responded to what pressure has been brought to bear in the past. They've got to rein in their client state. They’ve got to stop their testing of ballistic missiles. Hopefully long-term, we’ve got to ratchet that down. I think what President Trump is doing is sending a signal not only to North Korea but also to the people around the ‘Dear Leader’ as well as China and Russia.”

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