DALLAS – U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, said President Trump deserves a B+ grade for his foreign policy and national security since taking office four and a half months ago.
“He enforced the red line on Syrian chemical weapons. He enlisted China to help with North Korea – I think the preeminent threat to us right now. I think he has shown some metal in dealing with Russia and Putin particularly in dealing with Syria and around the world,” said Cornyn.
Cornyn made the comments during an appearance on WFAA-TV’s Inside Texas Politics Sunday morning.
“Unfortunately the president has, I think, created problems for himself by his Twitter habit,” added Cornyn. “And unfortunately because he hasn’t been able to assemble a team around him at the departments like the State Department, the Defense Department because of slow heel dragging by the Democrats.”
Cornyn also revealed that the Senate Intelligence Committee, of which he is a member, will likely complete its investigation into the president and Russian meddling during the 2016 election in the next several months.
“My hope is sometime in the September timeframe we’ll have a chance to wrap our work on the Intelligence Committee. These things do have a way of dragging on longer and longer because sometimes they are politically controversial as well. I think we ought to be able to wrap it up sometime this fall,” Cornyn said.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has a separate investigation underway.
The state’s senior senator also said criminal justice reform is not dead in this Congress.
But Cornyn said the federal government should not take it a step further and decriminalize marijuana like some states have done.
“I think that would be a mistake. Frankly, marijuana is a gateway drug,” said Cornyn.
He was asked whether Congress might do anything to the state’s that have decriminalized it already.
“It’s going to be interesting because the states have done this on a state basis while disregarding federal law which remains in place. I don’t know how the Trump administration and Attorney General Sessions are going to work their way through that because in many of those states it’s very popular now or at least a majority of the voters view that favorably so it’s going to be hard to put the genie back in the bottle,” he said.
