WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today joined Morning Joe to discuss recent news regarding Russia.

“I think it's important for us to remember that Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov are very experienced, very cagey players on the world stage,”said Senator Coons. “This is the fourth American president with which they've had the opportunity to work, and Vladimir Putin, a skilled former KGB agent, has all the tools at his disposal that Russia has used to play chess with us. And my concern is President Trump is playing checkers, or isn’t even on the same board.”

“We're not talking about North Korea. We're not talking about finding ways to move China toward reigning in North Korea’s nuclear program,”said Senator Coons. “Instead, we're talking about how we're on the retreat in the face of Russian assertion or aggressiveness, whether it's on the eastern edge of NATO or in the Middle East in Syria.”

Full audio and video available here.

Excerpts from the interview:

Senator Coons on Vladimir Putin’s political influence: I think it's important for us to remember that Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov are very experienced, very cagey players on the world stage. This is the fourth American president with which they've had the opportunity to work, and Vladimir Putin, a skilled former KGB agent, has all the tools at his disposal that Russia has used to play chess with us. And my concern is President Trump is playing checkers, or isn’t even on the same board.

Senator Coons on Russia and Tehran’s power in the Middle East: Well, that's got significant strategic consequences for us and our close allies. Michael Gerson wrote what I thought was a compelling column in the Washington Post yesterday entitled "Trump's Breathtaking Surrender to Russia,” that points out some of the consequences of unilaterally walking away from the Syrian opposition that’s been trained and equipped by the CIA over recent years, and the idea that we would make a number of concessions to Russia without getting anything in return, and how that weakness will affect our role in the Middle East, in Western Europe and throughout the world. As Richard Haass just pointed out, we've got significant challenges around the world. We're not talking about North Korea. We're not talking about finding ways to move China toward reigning in North Korea’s nuclear program. Instead, we're talking about how we're on the retreat in the face of Russian assertion or aggressiveness, whether it's on the eastern edge of NATO or in the Middle East in Syria. To your question, I think Iran is poised to take advantage of the opening that's being created here, and to spread their brand of extremism even more broadly throughout the Middle East.

Senator Coons on Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. being invited to testify before the Judiciary Committee: Well, both the Chair of the Committee, Senator Grassley, and Ranking Member Feinstein have publicly said they'll use the subpoena power if they don't come willingly. I expect we'll see them Wednesday. I think this is an important next step in better understanding what happened. I'll remind you that the meeting that they had, that Donald Trump Jr. had and Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had, was supposedly about adoptions, something that President Trump referenced as well. The adoptions issue is tied to the Magnitsky Act, a set of sanctions on Russian human rights abusers- folks folks who were involved in murdering Sergei Magnitsky back in 2009. This is something Senator Ben Cardin and Senator John McCain have really championed as part of our long history of standing up to Russian abuses of human rights.

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