Sen. Robert Menendez, with eye on committee chairmanship, blasts Trump in new report
Shortly after Viktor Orban visited him in the White House, President Donald Trump called one of his biggest critics in Congress to defend his decision to meet with the autocratic Hungarian leader.
Orbán is a “good guy,” Trump told New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, following the May 2019 meeting. The president also noted that Hungary had agreed to buy a lot of U.S. military equipment.
Trump’s assurances did not comfort Menendez, who has remained a fierce critic of the president throughout Trump’s first term. On Wednesday, the New Jersey senator released a blistering report detailing what he characterized as four years of foreign policy chaos under Trump.
The report, which describes Trump’s call to Menendez about Orban, also signals what Menendez may prioritize if Democrats win control of the Senate and he becomes the Foreign Relations Committee chairman next year. For one thing, the report calls, albeit somewhat vaguely, for holding the Trump administration “accountable for its attacks on democratic norms and values.”
“The state of the United States in the world hangs in a tenuous balance,” the report declares. “Our allies are weary and alienated; our own diplomats struggle to uphold the values we have promoted to the world for decades; and a U.S. president’s eschewing of democracy has helped to fuel autocratic trends abroad.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/menendez-with-eye-on-committee-chairmanship-blasts-trump-in-new-report/ar-BB1ag5sj?li=BBnb7Kz
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