Sen. Coons: “This is a moment for the Trump administration to focus”

Sen. Coons on DACA: “This is a direct challenge to Congress and it's my hope in a bipartisan and responsible way we will take this up and pass the DREAM Act promptly”

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined Morning Joe this morning to discuss North Korea and President Trump’s recent decision to end the DACA program.

“This is a moment for the Trump administration to focus, to communicate closely with our allies, not to stoke needless divisions between the United States and South Korea over trade issues, or with China over other issues,” said Senator Coons. “We need to really focus. We’ve got the cleanup from Hurricane Harvey ongoing in Texas. We’ve got Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida. We got a dozen other important issues in front of us here in the Senate. So this is a time for unified, clear, national leadership, for Congress to consult closely with the Trump administration, for all of us to be communicating in a measured and thoughtful way, we need our allies.”

Full audio and video available here.

Excerpts from the interview:

Senator Coons on the best option in North Korea: Later today, we’re going to get a briefing for all Senators with the Secretaries of Defense and State, and the Director of National Intelligence, and I’m hoping to hear in more detail what the Trump administration’s strategy is. I do think even though there is some reasonable question whether or not sanctions will ultimately deter Kim Jong-un of North Korea. I think we have to try, as hard as we can, all diplomatic actions while at the same time strengthening the anti-missile defenses of our vital allies South Korea and Japan and preparing to deploy stronger and more effective anti-missile defenses for the United States, for Guam, and the Homeland, and frankly after today's consultation. I think Congress and the Administration need to prepare for what would happen if we were required by increased threats- that were increasingly credible- from North Korea, to prepare for escalation of conflict.

More on North Korea: China hasn't really applied the complete economic pressure on North Korea that it could, and the challenge for us is to decide whether or not we want to provide the sort of pressure on the Chinese economy that might compel them to take have the pressure on economy that might compel them to tack actions against North Korea. I’ll remind you that this is the sort of work the Obama Administration did to finally isolate Iran and bring them to the table to negotiate about their nuclear weapons program- not just indirect sanctions, not just UN sanctions or EU sanctions, but secondary sanctions that blocked access to the American financial system for any country that was buying oil from Iran. We've got one major trading partner from North Korea, a very isolated country, and that's China. Given complex web of economic ties between China and the United States, we'd have to hesitate to really tighten the screws on China because it would have consequences for us, but China is not yet fully pulling everything that they could to affect North Korea.

Senator Coons on diplomacy: I am more concerned than I've been in the past. This is a moment for the Trump administration to focus, to communicate closely with our allies, not to stoke needless divisions between the United States and South Korea over trade issues, or with China over other issues. We need to really focus. We’ve got the cleanup from Hurricane Harvey ongoing in Texas. We’ve got Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida. We got a dozen other important issues in front of us here in the Senate. So this is a time for unified, clear, national leadership, for Congress to consult closely with the Trump administration, for all of us to be communicating in a measured and thoughtful way, we need our allies. This is the sort of moment that I hope will make clear to President Trump why a strong and robust diplomatic toolkit is important. I'll remind you that President Trump's budget proposed a more than 30% cut to our State Department. We'll have a vote on the Appropriations Committee on whether or not the Senate will cut that deep, to the very department that's responsible for helping us bridge differences with our allies and be fully prepared for the sort of confrontation we’re beginning to have now with North Korea.

Senator Coons on DACA: That's exactly why this announcement by the President is so troubling to me. When you get to know individual DREAMers as I have, I've had a chance to mam with DREAMers who are university students, or who are hard-working, contributing members of our community, or who have served in the American armed forces or, as this young man is, are currently serving. It changes your views, perhaps, I would hope for most, about these young Americans who were brought here illegally by their parents but through no fault of their own. The vast majority of the American people would like to see them stay here and would like to see them have a path towards continuing to contributing to our economy, to our country, to our security. Taken to its logical extreme, the President's position announced by Attorney General Sessions yesterday would mean that that young man would face deportation and that he and his family would face the uncertainty that at any time he might lose his currently legal status here because of DACA. This is a direct challenge to Congress and it's my hope in a bipartisan and responsible way we will take this up and pass the DREAM Act promptly.

Senator Coons on Donald Trump Jr.: The Senate Judiciary Committee staff have been quite busy. Over the summer, they’ve gathered over I think 20,000 pages of documents. They've conducted thousands of interviews. And I haven’t seen that Washington Post story this morning, forgive me, and I’m not sure exactly what day there’s going to be a staff interview. What I'm most looking forward to is the chance to ask questions in an open hearing. I do expect that at some point this month the Judiciary Committee will have an open hearing where Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort and perhaps Glenn Simpson will be testifying in front of us. That’s more important, frankly, than the staff interview that will be conducted soon because that gives us the opportunity to have on-the-record questioning of these principles who were actively involved in the meeting with folks who claimed they were bringing information about Hillary Clinton to the a core group of the Trump Campaign team members in the summer of 2016.

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