WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today joined Bloomberg TV to discuss former FBI Director James Comey and his upcoming testimony as well as the state of foreign affairs under the Trump administration.
Audio and video available below.
Excerpts from the interview:
Senator Coons on Comey’s testimony: Well, what’s most important is to hear clearly from the former FBI director whether in conversations with President Trump he was pressured to stop the investigation into the former national security advisor, to slow down, delay, or abandon the investigation into Russian interference in our 2016 elections. I do think it will be important for the American people to hear from the former FBI director confirmation of what our intelligence community found, which was that Russia did intentionally interfere in our last presidential election.
More on Comey: He is arguably messing with the wrong guy and the wrong institution. One of my concerns is that there still isn’t a confirmable nominee from the president for the FBI director. We just saw terror attacks in Great Britain and the president hasn’t nominated either a candidate to be our ambassador to the U.K or a new FBI director.
Senator Coons on President Trump’s tweets about the London mayor: I think it was a really unfortunate choice. President Trump is undermining one of our closest, most vital allies by picking a personal fight with the mayor of London rather than expressing his support for the people of Great Britain.
Senator Coons on President Trump’s Qatar decision: My concern is that the president has emboldened an authoritarian state and has encouraged all the GCC, the Gulf allies, to isolate Qatar rather than negotiate with Qatar about a different path. I understand the ways in which some of our key allies like Saudi Arabia dislike Qatar’s opening a line of communication to Iran and strongly dislike their support for Hamas, that’s something that I oppose as well. But, I think there might have been a better path towards this resolution than an abrupt cutting of ties.
Senator Coons on what Congress should do: Well, the core concern that I have in terms of engagement with the whole world is that President Trump proposed a 30% cut to the development and diplomacy budget of the United States. At this time of great instability and insecurity around the world whether in North Korea or Syria or the Persian Gulf or Russia, for us to not have ambassadors in some of our key posts and to cut back on diplomacy funding so dramatically strikes me as profoundly unwise.
Senator Coons on Trump's global engagement: I think it’s reckless and gravely concerning a lot of our allies around the world.
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