When the prime minister of Hungary visited the White House in May of 2019, President Trump called Sen. Robert Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to try to convince him that Viktor Orbán did not have the authoritarian tendencies that many in the international community accuse him of.
Menendez, a fierce critic of Trump, was not convinced. This Wednesday, he released a detailed report chronicling four years of foreign policy chaos under Trump and his "attacks on democratic norms and values,” POLITICO reports.
“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.”
“Decades of Congress underinvesting in its own structures, expertise, and personnel have left it unprepared to effectively stand up to the Trump administration’s rampant disregard for laws and norms, and overt circumventing of Congress,” the report continues. “Congress must be an effective partner and counterbalance to the Executive in charting a whole-of-government path forward to reestablishing the United States as a credible ally and principled world power.”
“While the U.S. will need to move forward and set a strong example, it cannot ignore the damage done by the Trump administration to democratic institutions and values,” it states. “Our country must engage in some accounting of the damage done and take steps to protect our democracy from future abuses.”
Read more over at POLITICO.
