Executive order

A Top Biden Ally Gets Candid About the Border, Netanyahu and the President’s Age

Sen. Chris Coons expects the president’s executive order to get struck down by the courts — but says he had no other choice.

By RYAN LIZZA

Sen. Chris Coons does not speak for President Joe Biden, but it’s hard to find a closer ally.

The Delaware Democrat occupies the Senate seat that Biden once held, co-chairs Biden’s reelection campaign and is widely believed to be on the short list for a cabinet post if there’s a second Biden administration. Coons is also one of Biden’s top foreign policy advisers, and he just returned from official visits to Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore.

In an interview for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, Coons discussed what he thinks would happen if China invaded Taiwan in a Trump administration versus a Biden administration and suggested he could even skip Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress next month if the Israeli prime minister isn’t coming forward with a real “vision” for the future.

The centrist Democrat also discussed the question of Biden’s age — the president has “a little diminished energy,” but “not evidence of mental feebleness” — and his new executive order on asylum.

“Bluntly, I think that the courts are going to suspend it and overturn it promptly,” Coons said, even as he didn’t blame Biden for implementing it.

“When, for political reasons, Republicans refuse to enact a responsible border measure, our president is acting,” he said. “But I think it is more in desperation than in a conviction that this is going to endure.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by Deep Dive senior producer Alex Keeney. You can listen to the full Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview here:

I want to talk a lot of foreign policy with you today, and especially about your recent trip to Asia. Before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit of news of the week, some domestic politics. I want to start with The Wall Street Journal’s controversial article about the president’s mental acuity. What did you make of that article?

I know both of the reporters. I don’t know if this was an editorial decision or how this story turned out with the focus and framing it did, but I’m one of a half-dozen senior Democrats in the Senate who were interviewed at length for the story but were not quoted. And the three on-the-record quotes in the story were from [Republicans] with strong motivations to present the president in an unfavorable light. I felt like it was a skewed and unbalanced story that tried to present the president as maybe publicly compelling and competent, but privately fading, and I just thought it was an unfair treatment and an inaccurate representation.

I’ve known you a long time, and I feel like you’re generally very intellectually honest. The president is not a young man. Look, I know you’re the co-chair of his campaign, and you’re highly incentivized to say things that will help him get reelected. But clearly, there have been changes. What’s your honest view about what has changed over time as you have witnessed him up close?

Well, look, if your implication is that what I just said was dishonest —

I don’t mean that at all. I just think there’s a lot of bullshit in the way that everyone talks about this. On the one hand, Biden is not mentally handicapped, as Trump would have it. But on the other hand, he’s also of advanced age. My parents are in their 80s. They’re not who they were 20 years ago.

To be clear, I think the core question isn’t whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden occasionally mistakes, you know, who’s the current president of France or who’s the current speaker of the House. Frankly, I think a lot of us who serve in public office and do interviews all the time and travel regularly and have 14-hour days make similar slips.

I get a little tired of the relentless focus on what are very minor slip-ups by President Biden that I see other elected officials of comparable age make regularly. The number of times I’ve been interviewed about the question, “Is Joe Biden the same man he was when he was 60?” vastly outweighs the number of times I’ve been asked, “Are you scared about the future of our democracy, given what Donald Trump said today?”

And I just wish there were a little more balanced treatment of it. Of course, Joe Biden is over 80 years old, and like any human being over 80 years old, that means there’s a little diminished energy.

But I think what is highlighted in some of the attack reels that I see on other news outlets is not evidence of mental feebleness, but is either evidence of a lifelong stutter or the result of having an incredibly demanding schedule and having served in public life for 50 years.

Speaking of Trump, there has been an outcry from the right this week about Donald Trump’s trial and that it was unfair, rigged, a kangaroo court, etc. Do you think the trial was fair and that the outcome was legitimate?

I think what you might have meant to say was that there was an outcry about his conviction. He was convicted on 34 felony counts.

The criticism I’ve heard ranged from he never should have been charged at all for anything, which I reject — no one’s above the law — to questioning why a business records case rose to the level that it deserves a prosecution and national attention. I think what makes this particular business records case different is that it was willfully done to conceal something that was significant, even explosive, on the eve of a federal presidential election.

What you don’t hear from Joe Biden is any attack on the judge, any attack on the prosecutor, any attack on the process by which his son is currently in federal court; any suggestion that he would misuse the presidential pardon power; any suggestion that his supporters should riot in the streets over it. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has done all of those things, and the difference reveals the difference in their commitment to the rule of law.

President Trump, when he was president, used the pardon power to pardon a whole series of his political cronies who were convicted of a variety of offenses and has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists.

Joe Biden has never mentioned any attempt at interfering in the federal court case that is proceeding in Wilmington, Delaware, against his own son, even though the prosecutor was a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney. Even though the crime charged and now prosecuted in court is one that is exceptionally rare to ever be prosecuted for a first-time, nonviolent offender. To misrepresent, allegedly, drug use on a background check form is very, very rarely prosecuted at all.

You are there in Wilmington. It’s a small community. You know all of the players involved in this, I assume, and the families. Do you think this prosecution is fair and warranted?

Look, I’m going to stay away from commenting on a prosecution where, as you put it, I know all of the players. I strongly doubt that the defendant would be in court if he were not the son of the president, but it is a chargeable offense. And so I’m just going to respect the decision of the prosecutor in the process and leave it there.

There has been a lot of debate about how Democrats should talk about the Trump conviction. As a Biden campaign co-chair — I know the co-chairs have a regular meeting, I don’t know if you have discussed this or not — but what’s your view about the politics of this? How should this be talked about by the Biden campaign? And should it be different for the president or campaign surrogates?

That’s a good question to which I don’t have a good answer, having missed the last co-chair call. I was traveling in Southeast Asia at the time.

I’ll say this: It is shocking to me that a former president has been prosecuted. I don’t think it helps our country internationally. I certainly heard a lot of consternation about how this did not seem to be the sort of thing that should happen in the United States. I think it matters to voters whether or not the former president was appropriately tried and convicted.

One question on the Senate. There are 10 Republican senators who have joined together and basically proposed a blockade of all Biden non-military nominees and a non-military funding. What impact do you think that will have this year?

It could be significant. I’ll remind you that Sen. [Tommy] Tuberville put a hold on literally hundreds of flag rank officer promotions, something that’s unprecedented. Several Republican senators have done the same thing to our ambassadors. They have put blanket holds and refused to allow any ambassador to be confirmed.

I was recently in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, which is an annual meeting of all the ministers of defense and many of the political and elected leaders from throughout the Indo-Pacific. We did not have an ambassador to Singapore for five years. And I heard from the foreign minister of Singapore and the prime minister of Singapore how not having a Senate-confirmed ambassador had a negative impact on our ability to engage with their government and engage with the region.

I want to ask you about Biden’s executive order on the border this week. I talked to your colleague, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and he condemned it as an “asylum ban” and called it “irresponsible and ill-advised.” What is your view of the executive order and the politics behind it?

Well, I think the politics are clear: President Biden has asked in every State of the Union for Congress to take up and act on legislation that would address border security and stability, that would provide for legal pathways for immigration, that would deal with a badly broken immigration and refugee system. Former President Trump tried over and over to use executive orders to significantly change our asylum law and practices and refugee programs.

Ultimately, this year, a bipartisan group of senators worked very hard to come up with a tough compromise that they then proposed as part of the supplemental funding bill and which I thought was going to end up being adopted by the Senate. We were a day away from its enactment, and former President Trump decided he’d rather have an issue at the border than a solution, and promptly began campaigning against it.

I do have some real concerns about the executive order power that was used, and how it might be misused by a future administration. And so I did weigh in and urge the administration to put some guardrails around it and to provide for some humane pathways.

Before it was written, like when it was in the debating stage?

Yes.

Want to read more stories like this? POLITICO Weekend delivers gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun every Friday. Sign up for the newsletter.

And what was the outcome of that?

Bluntly, I think that the courts are going to suspend it and overturn it promptly. President Biden has repeatedly said to Congress, both in private meetings and publicly, “I know that I can’t do this by executive order. Trump tried. The courts blocked him. You need to act.”

And when, for political reasons, Republicans refuse to enact a responsible border measure, our president is acting. But I think it is more in desperation than in a conviction that this is going to endure.

Interesting. It sounds like what you’re saying is he knows the courts are going to strike this down, but he has to do it just to show Congress and the American people that he’s trying everything, including what Republicans have told him he should do.

That’s how I see it. I know that President Biden would far prefer a broader, balanced, bipartisan legislative solution that is humane and effective. But we’re at a point where he’s got to try every option he responsibly can.

Let’s talk about Israel. Netanyahu is coming to address Congress. I’ve talked to Democrats all week who are just hitting their foreheads and not understanding why Chuck Schumer agreed to this. Why is Congress giving him this platform?

A previous time that Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the Congress, it ended up being more of a political rally against President Obama than anything —

In 2015, when he criticized the Iran deal.

Yes.

I recognize that our allies around the world do not always agree with us, and hearing their perspective is an important part of both diplomacy and respect. I have met with Prime Minister Netanyahu in person in Tel Aviv several times since Oct. 7, and appreciate that he’s always given me plenty of time to meet and to exchange views.

But frankly, I’ll repeat what essentially [Israeli War Cabinet Member] Benny Gantz has already said, which is “Where’s your plan?” And if he does not have a plan for how to secure the release of the hostages, how to bring the fighting to an end, what governance looks like for Gaza the day after, what his view is for the future for the region, if he doesn’t have a vision and an insight that is more developed and more engaging and more promising than what he said so far, then I don’t need to go.

If, on the other hand, he is bringing to us, “Here’s my plan, here’s my proposal, here’s my answer to all the criticisms about humanitarian aid, about civilian deaths. And here’s my plans for the path forward, for how we’re going to bring in regional players, for how we’re ever going to achieve a sustainable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” — OK, I’ll go listen to that. I’m interested.

Do you expect there to be mass protests if he speaks in front of Congress?

Absolutely. I would be stunned if there weren’t. And there is right in front of him right now, a proposal that if Hamas accepts, I am hopeful that he will accept. But getting both Netanyahu and [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar to agree to a hostage exchange, to a cease-fire, to a path forward, has been devilishly difficult. And I was just speaking to our CIA director about his efforts. He’s been the principal negotiator on this.

Bill Burns is back in the region?

He’s back in the region. He’s very talented.

Obviously, any negotiation that involves Hamas and the Qataris and the Egyptians and the Israelis and the Americans is very difficult, very complex. And I respect just how much time and effort President Biden has personally put into trying to resolve this conflict, and just how hard Secretary [Antony] Blinken and National Security Adviser [Jake] Sullivan have worked on this.

Senator [Lindsey] Graham, my colleague and I would say my friend, has also been just tirelessly engaged on trying to keep alive the prospect of Saudi recognition of Israel in exchange for a path towards Palestinian self-governance and a security guarantee from the United States. Ten of us, a bipartisan group of five Republicans and five Democrats, went to Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Cairo two weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, just to explore whether there was still any life to this dream of regional security and a real path towards a two-state solution. And I was really struck at how passionately both [Egyptian] President [Abdel Fattah el-] Sisi and [Saudi] Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman engaged with us and how intent they were on trying to find a path towards that solution.

Can the Saudi-U.S. portion of this theoretically go forward without the Saudi-Israeli portion? Or does it have to be done in tandem?

I think it has to be done in tandem. The details of what a U.S. security guarantee for the Saudis would look like have been worked out. But for a significant number of us in the Senate, our willingness to provide this guarantee to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is because it is also a path towards security and stability for Israel against Iran in an unstable and dangerous region, and a path towards Palestinian self-governance.

Let’s talk about your recent trip to Asia. It seems like one of the highlights was that you met with the president of Taiwan. It’s always interesting to me when significant figures like yourself visit with leaders of Taiwan. For instance, when Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi made that trip, it turned into an international incident. Did you experience any public blowback from the Chinese?

They were not happy.

How do they express that?

Well, our arrival was closely following what was already a robust demonstration of displeasure by the PRC. The newly elected president of Taiwan, President Lai [Ching-te], had just been inaugurated, and a bipartisan delegation from the House and from the Senate separately arrived.

Now, they weren’t trailing banners saying, “Senator Coons, we denounce you,” but it seems to me that the duration and the degree and the intensity of their demonstration of displeasure by threatening Taiwanese air and naval space reflected just how unhappy they are about what they perceive as inappropriate interference in domestic affairs. And I believe they put out statements to that effect.

What did you learn on this trip? What are the big takeaways?

So, I went to Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia, and I was already well aware of the central role that Taiwan plays in the global semiconductor industry. In the Philippines, I visited a semiconductor chip testing and packaging plant. And one of our initiatives in the Philippines is the development of something called the Luzon Economic Corridor, which will help further integrate the Philippine economy into the region and help strengthen their connections to semiconductor chip production, both in the United States and in Taiwan.

Taiwan has a robust, vibrant democracy, and one of the things that I think is not news, but is worth repeating, is that part of why Taiwan is such a challenge to the CCP is that it demonstrates that it is possible for them to have a robust, growing, stable, prosperous, free enterprise system that is a democracy. So I think their aggressiveness regionally is all fueled by both a historic sense of grievance, a historic sense that Taiwan belongs to the PRC as a province, but also a determination to prevent any example of democracy amongst the Chinese people, whether in Hong Kong or today in Taiwan.

If next year China tried to take control of Taiwan, what would the difference in response be in a Biden administration versus a Trump administration?

Well, we don’t have to guess. We can look at the response to the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where President Biden promptly, actually before the invasion, was working very hard to engage our allies. Over the last two years, President Biden has done a lot of hard work to pull together 50 countries around the world to both enforce sanctions against Russia and deliver support for Ukrainian refugees, financial support for the Ukrainian government, military support for the Ukrainian fighters who are bravely pushing back against Russian aggression. I would expect a similar response to an attempt at overtaking Taiwan through, say, an amphibious invasion.

I think President Biden has said we would go to war with China over Taiwan. He said that on a number of occasions, despite the policy of “strategic ambiguity.” I’m not sure that a President Trump would go to war over Taiwan. And I guess my question is, where do you think the public is on that?

I don’t know. And part of the point of an election, part of the point of engaging our public, is to both remind them and solicit their advice and input and to mobilize.

I was in Manila last week. One of the things I did was to visit the American war cemetery. There are 17,000 American war dead buried there alongside Filipinos who fought bravely with the United States to liberate the Philippines from Japanese aggression and occupation. It is a serene but haunting place where you realize just what a tremendous sacrifice we made in order to secure now eight decades of relative peace and stability around the world.

China is pushing very hard against the system of ordered liberty, freedom of navigation and rule of law that we largely put in place with our allies after the Second World War. And there is a similar contest today in the world.

Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are coming closer and closer together. The Russian war machine in Ukraine would not be working now without Iranian drones and North Korean artillery shells, and China is also providing critical support for Russia through dual-use commercial items. It’s worth reflecting on and questioning at what point are we willing to sacrifice in order to deter further aggression?

In 2014, Russia took a whole series of steps against Georgia, against Moldova, against Crimea. And some would argue that we did not push back earlier, harder. Most of our European partners were not as concerned. But when this full-scale invasion began in 2022, every European leader I heard from and spoke to said, this is a level of aggression that requires our response. And my hope is that Americans would see a physical invasion of Taiwan the same way.