WASHINGTON – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss foreign policy; specifically, the Trump administration’s recent actions against the Assad regime.

"This is a very dangerous moment. This is no longer reality TV. This is reality. We have American troops on the ground fighting in Syria against ISIS, in Iraq against ISIS. We have hundreds in Syria, thousands in Iraq, and they're quite exposed if Russia's ally, Iran, chooses to take action against them. They're at some risk if Assad turns against American or coalition airplanes conducting missions against ISIS in Syria. It's a complex and difficult situation, and I think the president needs to be clear with us what his intended next steps are," said Senator Coons.

Full video and audio are available here.

Excerpts from the interview:

Senator Coons on the Trump administration’s policy towards the Assad regime: We don't really know, and I think President Trump owes the United States a clear policy on how we're going to be behaving moving forward towards Bashar al-Assad and his murderous regime in Syria. We're in the sixth year of Assad's war against his own people. He's killed more than 400,000 Syrians and turned millions into refugees. I am hopeful that Secretary Tillerson's visit to Moscow, his meeting with their foreign minister, Lavrov, and possibly Putin is an opportunity for President Trump and his administration, his leaders to make it clearer exactly what position they intend to take. Obviously Sean Spicer didn't have a good day. I think it was wise of him to correct his comments, and my hope is that we can now focus on working with President Trump and his administration, those of us in Congress on the Foreign Relations Committee, and help them focus and sharpen what their policy and strategy is going to be because they've made such contradictory statements just in the last two weeks. 

Senator Coons on what he would like to hear from the administration: I'm encouraged that frankly that President Trump and Secretary Tillerson and Ambassador Haley have moved from a position two weeks ago of saying that we're just going to have to live with Assad and we need to focus on ISIS to recognizing that Assad is a brutal murderer. But I think we need to have clarity. How much farther are we willing to go? The White House was saying today that Russia almost certainly knew that Syria was about to carry out a chemical weapons attack. Are we going to ratchet up sanctions against Russia for their ongoing support for Assad? Are we willing to use force against Assad if he uses barrel bombs or other conventional weapons against his civilian population as he's been doing for years? And how are we going to engage our vital allies across NATO and Western Europe in the fight against Assad if that's the direction President Trump chooses to go? He's the president, and it's important that he develops and clarifies for the American people what policy he's going to be pursuing going forward against Bashar al-Assad. 

More on President Trump: I think my first piece of advice to the president would be don't make major statements on this in a tweet. Take your time. Consult with your secretary of defense and secretary of state and national security advisor and produce a more thorough and thoughtful statement in the next couple of days about what President Trump intends in terms of our direction. This is a very dangerous moment. This is no longer reality TV. This is reality. We have American troops on the ground fighting in Syria against ISIS, in Iraq against ISIS. We have hundreds in Syria, thousands in Iraq, and they're quite exposed if Russia's ally, Iran, chooses to take action against them. They're at some risk if Assad turns against American or coalition airplanes conducting missions against ISIS in Syria. It's a complex and difficult situation, and I think the president needs to be clear with us what his intended next steps are. 

Senator Coons on Sean Spicer: To be generous, I do think that what he was trying to do was to say that the use of chemical weapons air-dropped against civilians is a horrible thing and that it deserves to be confronted in the way that Trump did with an attack against the air base that launched the chemical weapons used against Syrian civilians. It's never a good idea to bring Hitler in as an example, and obviously Spicer tripped up quite a bit. And this is a particularly inappropriate week to be overlooking the horrors of the Holocaust. So I do think the larger point here is that the administration, its spokesman, Mr. Spicer, is trying to say that Bashar al-Assad is an absolutely horrible person and that Putin and Putin's regime is going to rue the day that they stood by as Assad carried out terrible attacks against his own people year in and year out. And they're trying to increase pressure on Putin to make a choice here, to decide whether to rejoin the west. Remember, Putin was kicked out of the G8. The G7 is just meeting this week in Italy. There are sanctions against Putin's regime for his aggressive actions in the Ukraine and in Syria. So to be generous, what I think Spicer was trying to do today was to raise the level of rhetorical pressure on Putin to make a choice about whether to keep backing Assad. 

 

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