Arizona Senator John McCain isn’t letting brain cancer keep him from standing tough.

Speaking Sunday morning, regarding North Korea and the sixth round of nuclear testing that happened last weekend, McCain made it clear that North Korea and their psychotic leader, Kim Jong-un were forcing our hand.

“We have really two choices,” the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman said of accepting a nuclearized Korean Peninsula and working with China to “put the brakes on” the rogue nation’s leader, Kim Jong Un. “The third option is — that we’ve got to do along with it [working with China] — is missile defense, capabilities to defend Korea. In other words, make sure that Kim Jong Un knows that if he acts in an aggressive fashion, the price will be extinction.”

Dude.

McCain has been in the game long enough to know you don’t say such things lightly, and he’s looking for partners.

 McCain, during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” also implored for better relations between the U.S. with Japan and South Korea; the latter has recently been subject to fresh trade negotiations.

Yes, with the threat from North Korea being what it is, now is not the time to be alienating allies.

McCain, in addition, slammed the President Trump-Chuck Schumer-Nancy Pelosi debt ceiling deal as “devastating to national defense,” which caught many Republicans by surprise.

“This was not an exercise in bipartisanship,” he said. “The Republicans leaders, [House Speaker Paul] Ryan and [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, were surprised to hear that he had cut this deal with [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer] and [House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi].”

They shouldn’t have been. They knew what he was, from the beginning.

I’m not thrilled with the idea of going into another prolonged war with Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief. I’m even less enthused with the idea of waiting to see if Jong-Un will wait for 3 more years before doing something harmful.