WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today joined “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC to discuss the upcoming vote on President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. Coons also discussed Russia’s attack on the U.S. election.
Full audio and video of the interview are available here: http://bit.ly/2jteFpp
Excerpts from the interview below:
“It is clear that [Rex Tillerson] is well experienced, that he is seasoned, that he has traveled around the world extensively, he knows world leaders, and he gave some strong and firm answers. Answers that really differed from President-elect Trump's positions on the JCPOA, on the Paris Climate Agreement, on the importance of NATO, and that was encouraging. But on human rights and on climate change, in response to withering questions from Senator Rubio and others, he didn't do so well. So I frankly think that his confirmation is uncertain at this point and is largely in the hands of a few undecided members.”
“Mr. Tillerson and I actually had a very constructive hour and a half meeting the week before his confirmation hearing. I am still weighing my vote on that.”
“It's my real hope that President-elect Trump will distance himself from these outrageous accusations by Vladimir Putin. We have a bipartisan Senatorial investigation underway right now by the intelligence committee into whether or not there were inappropriate ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government led by Vladimir Putin.”
“A year ago when Vladimir Putin sat down with a group of his senior leaders at the Kremlin and sketched out the idea that they might somehow be able to undermine the strength and the durability of American democracy, our alliance with NATO, our closeness with the EU, they couldn't have imagined they could succeed this much. To have a public dispute between our President-elect and the outgoing head of the CIA, to have so much tension and discord between the United States, Angela Merkel, NATO, EU, just caused over the last few days by some of the reckless and irresponsible tweets by the President-elect.”