Sen. Coons on Donald Trump, Jr.: “For a group of folks that have nothing to hide about their interactions with Russia, they certainly seem to have been hiding a lot.”

Sen. Coons: “Donald Trump’s policy of America first is increasingly turning out to mean America alone”

Sen. Coons: “Vladimir Putin and his Russian intelligence agencies fully intend to interfere in our next election in 2018 and 2020”

Sen. Coons on cybersecurity commission with Russia: “That's like tweeting out that he’d like to fight drug abuse in America by starting a new drug interdiction conference with ‘El Chapo’”

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today joined Morning Joe to discuss foreign policy under the Trump administration.

“Donald Trump’s policy of America first is increasingly turning out to mean America alone. I'll remind you that President Trump's strategy for how to confront North Korea's aggressive nuclear weapons program, one of our top national security challenges, is to try to organize world pressure on China to get China to put pressure on North Korea,” said Senator Coons. “If that’s the goal, than the outcome of many of the meetings and interactions that President Trump had with the G-20 did not advance that goal at all. His withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, his trumpeting nationalism and economic isolationism frankly did not go over well with the G-20, and the final communiqué makes it clear that, on some key issues, the United States is increasingly isolated.”

Full video and audio available here.

Excerpts from interview:

Senator Coons on the Putin-Trump meeting: Well, I think on this question of confronting Vladimir Putin on his interference in our 2016 election, Donald Trump stepped up to the plate and whiffed. The idea that we're going to simply agree to disagree and move on I think steps aside from confronting the very real challenge, which is that Vladimir Putin and his Russian intelligence agencies fully intend to interfere in our next election in 2018 and 2020. Former FBI Director Comey testified to the Senate that given that Russia has paid no serious price at all, we can expect them to attempt and probably succeed in interfering in our next elections. Imagine how much stronger that confrontation would have been if President Trump had presented Putin with a signed law that imposed tougher sanctions on Russia for their inappropriate and unacceptable interference in our election. 

 More on the meeting: Well, for a group of folks that have nothing to hide about their interactions with Russia, they certainly seem to have been hiding a lot. The idea that these three individuals, the president's son, the president's son-in-law, and the president's campaign manager organized a meeting in order to get the fruits of cyber hacking into their opponent's campaign is strongly suggestive of potentially criminal activity and the idea that they failed to previously report this despite being required to do so suggests that there may well be some inappropriate action, some conspiracy, or some obstruction. I can't reach those conclusions as to whether it is or isn't because I don't have that evidence in front of me. But, it certainly suggests based on the New York Times reporting that this is the sort of thing that Bob Mueller should be looking at closely and if we can do so without interfering with Bob Mueller's independent investigation, we should do so on the Judiciary Committee as well. 

 Senator Coons on Russia and American foreign policy: Donald Trump’s policy of America first is increasingly turning out to mean America alone. I'll remind you that President Trump's strategy for how to confront North Korea's aggressive nuclear weapons program, one of our top national security challenges, is to try to organize world pressure on China to get China to put pressure on North Korea. If that’s the goal, than the outcome of many of the meetings and interactions that President Trump had with the G-20 did not advance that goal at all. His withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, his trumpeting nationalism and economic isolationism frankly did not go over well with the G-20, and the final communiqué makes it clear that, on some key issues, the United States is increasingly isolated. 

 Senator Coons on Trump’s tweets about cybersecurity: That’s beyond puzzling. That's like tweeting out that he’d like to fight drug abuse in America by starting a new drug interdiction conference with ‘El Chapo.’ The idea that somehow the right way to fight cybersecurity is to form some joint coalition with exactly our most capable cyber adversary, it's -- it defies description.

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