IT’S MAO OR NEVER!

Trump warns China to rein in N. Korea

President Trump delivered an ultimatum to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in advance of their first presidential meeting this week at Mar-a-Lago: Contain North Korea’s aggression or the United States will.

“Well, if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you,” Trump told the Financial Times in an interview published online Sunday.

North Korea’s nuclear program and US-China trade relations are expected to top the agenda when the leaders meet Thursday and Friday at Trump’s Florida resort.

Trump campaigned against unfair Chinese trade policies and their “rape” of America and has already ticked off Beijing officials by talking with Taiwan’s leader and violating the longstanding “One China” policy. But in the interview, Trump sounded an optimistic tone for a grand bargain with President Xi.

“I would not be at all surprised if we did something that would be very dramatic and good for both countries and I hope so,” Trump said.

In the wide-ranging interview, Trump also said that if resistant Republicans don’t come around on repealing and replacing ObamaCare, he’ll work with Democrats to get a deal and then “the Freedom Caucus loses so big.”

“If we don’t get what we want, we will make a deal with the Democrats and we will have — in my opinion — not as good a form of health care, but we are going to have a very good form of health care,” Trump said.

He added that he needs the House Freedom Caucus because without support from Democrats, “you need close to 100 percent of the Republicans.”

“Well, I will get the Democrats if I go the second way,” he warned. “The second way, which I hate to see, then the Freedom Caucus loses so big and I hate to see that.”

The Freedom Caucus had strongly opposed the GOP’s plan to replace ObamaCare, saying it didn’t go far enough.

Trump insisted he didn’t want to force a vote on the healthcare plan despite dwindling support from Republicans.

“Yeah, I don’t lose. I don’t like to lose . . . There was no reason to take a vote. I said, ‘Don’t take a vote,’ and we will see what happens,” he said.

The day before the doomed vote in the House, Trump and his advisers fanned out on Capitol Hill to lobby reluctant lawmakers and invited many of the them to the White House for a closed-door arm-twisting meeting before he finally issued a demand for an up-or-down vote.

But House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the plug on the GOP-backed American Health Care Act when it became clear it didn’t have the votes to pass.

In remarks after the defeat, Trump called himself a “team player” and praised Ryan and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price as working “very, very hard” on the bill.

By Monday, Trump laid the blame squarely on Democrats and the Freedom Caucus, writing in a tweet: “The Republican House Freedom Caucus was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”