President Donald Trump touched on some encouraging foreign policy points in his joint address to Congress Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. But the speech’s optimistic tone was soured by preexisting concerns about Trump’s ties to Russia and the administration’s potential diplomatic and foreign aid budget cuts.
In an address before a highly polarized chamber, Trump mentioned support for NATO, America’s ties to Israel, and fighting ISIS. He also laid out a vision of “robust and meaningful” foreign engagement, which included respecting the sovereignty of other nations and the potential for making friends with states that were once enemies.
Democrats who oversee foreign policy in both chambers of Congress told TWS they were pleased with Trump’s pledges to support Israel and NATO. Still, they criticized the speech as light on details and could not shake lingering concerns about the president’s pledges to improve relations with the Kremlin. The same goes for a reported proposal to cut the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budgets by 37 percent.
“I was encouraged that President Trump forcefully reasserted our support for NATO, I think that was important for him to say and for our allies to hear,” said Delaware senator Christopher Coons, a member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “But he also made some puzzling and vague comments about how we should be open to new partnerships … saying even those who were our enemies in wars of the past are today our allies.”
“He was completely unspecific about what he had in mind,” Coons said. “It is somewhat troubling to think that he may have in mind a new partnership with Russia.”
The top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, said he also saw those comments as a veiled reference to Russia.
“He has this infatuation with Putin and this infatuation with Russia. It scares the hell out of me,” Engel said. “On the one hand he talks about NATO in a positive way, and on the other hand he’s talking about Putin, or he’s talking about NATO countries having to pay their fair way—I’m for it, but I’m not for using it as a pretext to break up NATO.”
“He talked about unbreakable bond with Israel, I’m happy about that, he talked against anti-Semitism, I’m happy about that,” he said.
Engel said he remains concerned about potential budget cuts to the State Department.
Ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ben Cardin said Trump’s “one-liners” about NATO and Israel were fine, but criticized the address for not laying out a clear agenda on foreign policy.
“What are we going to do about North Korea? How are we going to engage our partners on the Middle East? How are we going to deal with the real hotspots in the world, our own hemisphere? He didn’t talk about any of that,” Cardin said. “He said, respect our sovereignty, and then doesn’t talk about Russia. That’s a glaring absence.”
Cardin also mentioned his concern about the reported budget cuts.
“As I said, it’s a 30 percent cut in State Department budget,” he said. “It just doesn’t add up.”
California congressman Brad Sherman, the second-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said those potential budget cuts count more than Trump’s tough talk on Iran.
“His tough talk on Iran was almost nothing, every few months the Obama administration came up with a few more entities to put on their sanctions list,” Sherman said, referring to sanctions the Trump administration levied on Iranian entities after the country conducted a ballistic missile test. “He’s paid lip service, but nothing counts as much in this town as the expenditure of money.”
