Sen. John McCain said he worries about President Trump’s grasp of issues facing the United States and his conflicting statements that create confusion among the nation’s allies.
“Well, I worry. I worry about the president’s understanding of some of these issues and his contradictory articulations,” the Arizona Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday. “And I think the roll out of the, ‘immigration reform’ was an example of a need for an orderly decision-making process in the White House. And that, I think, is probably what’s plaguing them more than anything else right now.”
McCain, who was attending a security conference in Munich, Germany, said he has confidence a Republican-controlled Congress can investigate the president.
“I hope so. And I have to believe so,” McCain said, adding: “More hope than belief.”
The senator has called for an investigation into Russia’s meddling into the 2016 presidential election that included hacking the Democratic National Committee and the emails of some Hillary Clinton campaign staffers.
“Let’s get some answers to some fundamental questions. There are so many questions out there that we first of all need to understand the parameters of what’s happened here,” he said.
McCain has also backed some of his GOP Senate colleagues who want a full examination of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Moscow officials during the campaign, a controversy Trump has shrugged off as a “scam” created by the news media.
During the interview with host Chuck Todd, McCain criticized Trump’s comments about how “the fake news media” is “an enemy of the American people,” saying that’s how dictators get started.
“I hate the press. I hate you especially. But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital,” McCain said. “If you want to preserve – I’m very serious now – if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.”
Speaking from Munich, McCain said “there’s a lot of uncertainty … around our friends and allies today” over Trump’s inconsistent foreign policy pronouncements.
“But I worry about statements which upset our friends at a time when the strains on the European Union and Europeans are greater than they have been since any time since the end of the Cold War,” McCain said.
In a speech on Friday to the Munich Security Conference, McCain questioned Trump’s shifting from the “universal values” that created NATO and his cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On NBC, McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Trump could reassure the nation’s European allies with a speech clarifying his beliefs.
“I think so much of this could be cured with a straightforward, clear, important speech on the part of the president of the United States,” McCain said. “He’s going to speak to Congress here pretty soon as you know. The State of the Union. I think that’s going to be a very, very important speech.”
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