President Trump’s administration is “in disarray,” but the new president remains committed to international leadership, Sen. John McCain told European leaders Friday.
“Make no mistake, my friends, these are dangerous times but you should not count America out,” he said during a speech at the Munich Security Conference. “And we should not count each other out.”
In a later panel discussion, McCain was pressed to discuss the differences between Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ full-throated support for the NATO alliance and Trump’s various criticisms. McCain sought to thread the needle by praising Trump’s national security team, just days after retired Mike Flynn was fired as White House national security advisor for lying the Vice President Pence about his phone calls with a Russian ambassador.
“I believe that if I had been asked to pick the team around President Trump, I couldn’t have picked a better team,” McCain said. “The Flynn issue obviously is something that shows that in many respects this administration is in disarray and they have a lot of work to do. But I couldn’t be happier to have a secretary of defense in General Mattis. You’re going to see General Kelly. He’s an outstanding individual. And there are those who are now going to be on his team who I think we can have great confidence in, most importantly on national security.”
McCain tried initially to avoid criticizing Trump directly. “I move we adjourn,” he quipped when asked about Trump’s foreign policy.
But the speech he gave before the panel discussion began was an implicit rebuttal to Trump, who loomed over the conference in absentia. The night-owl session of the conference’s first day, for instance, was titled “The Future of NATO: ‘Obsolete’ or ‘Very Important?'” — an explicit reference to Trump’s various comments on the transatlantic alliance.
“I know there is profound concern across Europe and the world that America is laying down the mantle of leadership,” McCain said during his speech. “I can only speak for myself, but I do not believe that that is the message you will hear from all of the American leaders who cared enough to travel here to Munich this weekend.”
“That’s not the message you heard today from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis,” he said. “That’s not the message you will hear from Vice President Mike Pence. That’s not the message you will hear from Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. And that’s certainly not the message you will hear tomorrow from our bipartisan congressional delegation.”
But McCain also acknowledged that “many of our peoples, including in my own country are giving up on the West,” a shift he attributed to bad leadership. “All of us must accept our share of blame for this turn of events,” McCain said. “We grew complacent, we made mistakes. At times we tried to do too much and at others we failed to do enough. We lost touch with many of our people. We’ve been too slow to recognize and respond to their hardships. We need to face up to these realities, but this does not mean losing hope and retreating. That we must not do.”
