Fox News "Fox News Sunday" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Chris Coons

Interview

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WALLACE: Welcome back to Helsinki, ahead of tomorrow's summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.

There is plenty for the two leaders to talk about here. International hot spots in Europe and the Middle East, and, of course, the continuing controversy over Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Joining me now from Wilmington, Delaware, Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a key member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator, in the wake of the indictment of those 12 Russian intelligence officers, the announcement on Friday for alleged interference in the 2016 election, should President Trump canceled the summit with Vladimir Putin?

SEN. CHRIS COONS, D-DELAWARE, SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Well, no, Chris, I think it's too late for him to cancel the summit. But President Trump needs to make it clear that he knows who he is meeting with.

He's not meeting with a competitor. He is not meeting with a potential friend. He's meeting with an adversary. And President Trump's own director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, just said on Friday that Russia continues to be our most aggressive foreign adversary and an ongoing threat to our upcoming elections.

WALLACE: I want to pick up on the president's reaction and response because Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in announcing the indictment on Friday said that he had briefed President Trump before he left for Europe, but this is how President Trump has addressed the whole issue here in the days before the summit in Europe.

This is how he talked first of all about the Mueller investigation, and how he intends to bring up the issue with Vladimir Putin. Take a look.

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WALLACE: Senator, are you worried about how tough President Trump will be with Putin and the summit about Russian meddling in 2016 and about the potential for more in 2018?

COONS: I am. I'm very concerned, and frankly, Chris, as you just brought up in your interview with Ambassador Huntsman, there is a menu of things to be concerned about, that he might withdraw American troops from Syria, that he might cancel military exercises with our regional allies, that he might recognize Russia's annexation with Crimea and you pressed the ambassador whether he could say with confidence he would do none of those things or weaken a NATO alliance, another thing you raised, and he couldn't say that with clarity and confidence.

And after President Trump's whiplash performances in Brussels, the United Kingdom and the G7 summit, I will say it's difficult to predict with clarity what president Trump will or won't do with Vladimir Putin. That's what gives me real pause.

WALLACE: I'm going to get to some of those other issues in a moment, but let's go back to this issue of election meddling. When I talk to Ambassador Huntsman, and I said, are you going to put the Russians on notice? No meddling in November in the midterms or the relationship is in dire jeopardy, and he said yes.

Do you have confidence that President Trump will do that, and how do you think you should do that? How high should you raise the stakes about interference in the midterms?

COONS: Look, there's nothing more important than our being a democracy. Just by meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Trump is potentially advancing Putin's goals of ending some of his isolation after his illegal annexation of Crimea. So, I think he needs to make it clear that we know that they interfered in our 2016 elections and stop calling this a rigged witch hunt, and he needs to say that the sanctions already passed by Congress, the Countering America's Adversary Sanctions Act that was passed by 98-2, that those sanctions will be more broadly and more vigorously and more thoroughly implemented by the Trump administration unless Russia accepts accountability for their illegal actions and stops meddling in our elections and the elections of our allies.

WALLACE: Senator, at the end of the NATO conference this week in Belgium, the president said that the alliance is strong, but along the way during his time there he took some shots at some of our allies. Here are a couple.

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WALLACE: Senator, do you think President Trump is strengthening the NATO alliance, or weakening it, and how do you feel that might play out in the president's summit with Putin here?

COONS: Well, first, let me commend President Trump for having gotten $14 billion of more investment in their national defense in our collective security by NATO members by pressing them harder than before. This is a trend that began under President Obama and President Bush, but it has accelerated and that's a positive.

But let me also say I'm worried about the ways in which President Trump undermines our NATO collective security by attacking our allies and through his tariff policies. We just had a striking hear it in the Thursday where, on a bipartisan basis, many senators of both parties question whether the Trump administration's national security-based tariffs against vital NATO allies like Canada or Germany or the U.K. weakens our alliance.

These are folks who have suffered combat deaths, more than 1,000 NATO troops have died fighting alongside us in Afghanistan, and I think it's important that we strengthen the alliance and not distract our vital allies from our shared efforts against Russia on security and China on trade.

WALLACE: Senator, let's talk about some of the issues that may come up tomorrow here in Helsinki. There is talk about the possibility that the president will push Putin to scale back Iranian influence in Syria in return for a pullout of some or all of the U.S. troops in northeastern Syria. Do you see the basis for any kind of an agreement there?

COONS: Well, it is critical that we reduce Iran's malign influence in Syria, in particular southwest Syria, where they are directly threatening our vital ally, Israel. But I think for our troops to be pulled out, for us to abruptly abandon our Kurdish allies, who were so central to the defeat of ISIS, would be strategically unwise because if we don't have a presence on the ground, we don't have a seat at the table as the resolution of the Assad regime's brutal war against its own people is negotiated.

And so, I would certainly hope there wasn't an abrupt withdrawal of an American presence in Syria, since it's vital to protecting the folks who fought alongside us in the war against ISIS.

WALLACE: President Trump has refused to rule out accepting the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and here's what he had to say about Putin's actions in that part of the world.

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WALLACE: The fact is, Senator, that President Trump has been tougher than President Obama when it comes to dealing with Russia, especially on the sanctions issue and -- the Crimea issues and others. He's issued more sanctions. He's expelled more diplomats and he also has sent lethal aid to Ukraine, which President Obama refused to do.

COONS: Chris, I supported the provision of lethal aid to Ukraine, I visited Ukraine, and they are very nervous about what might happen between President Trump and President Putin. I will remind you that one of the strong steps that President Obama did take was getting our allies to expel Russia from the G8 to reduce it to the G7.

And in the recent G7 meeting, President Trump said perhaps Russia should rejoin. I would support our reducing sanctions on Russia, allowing them to rejoin G8 if they took the steps that they must take to withdraw their forces from eastern Ukraine, to undo the illegal annexation of Crimea, but to simply waive that, to say it is somehow all Obama's fault and let's move forward would be to weaken our vital allies in Europe who have joined us in sustaining tough sanctions against Russia.

I commend President Trump for the steps he has taken, but to simply waive this off as Obama's fault misses the vital historical context here. President Putin is the first Russian leader since Stalin to expand their territory. We can't allow this to go unchallenged.

WALLACE: Senator, I've got less than a minute left and I want you to switch hats and put on your hat as a top member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Unlike some of your colleagues, you have not already announced that you're going to vote against the president's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. You say that you are actually going to wait and listen and talk to him, but you have expressed concerns.

And that raises this issue -- shouldn't a conservative president who made it an issue in the election, shouldn't a president who, like Donald Trump, be able to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court who is well within the conservative mainstream, even if you don't like what his positions are?

COONS: Well, I need to review all of Judge Kavanaugh's record first, Chris, if I could. I've known Brett Kavanaugh for nearly 30 years since law school, but I don't know the details of what he did in the Bush administration, what he did on Judge Starr's independent counsel team, and I certainly haven't read most of his 300 opinions.

I do think it's my job on the Judiciary Committee respecting Judge Kavanaugh's credentials to better understand his jurisprudence and to understand whether he is in fact in the conservative mainstream, or is that one end of it, and would change our Constitution and our jurisprudence in this country that would affect millions of American lives and undo long settled guarantees of freedoms, rights and liberties.

WALLACE: Senator Coons, thank you. Thanks for joining us. It's always good to talk with you, sir.

COONS: Thank you.

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