The United States Republican Senator John McCain on Friday said that US President Donald Trump's administration was in "disarray" and that the NATO will be alarmed by his team's growing incapability of "separating truth from lies."
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Addressing a security conference in Munich, McCain, a known Trump critic, said that the resignation of the president's security adviser, Michael Flynn, showed deep problems rooted within the administration. Flynn was asked to resign earlier from the post of the National Security Adviser by Trump earlier this week over his links with Russia.
"I think that the Flynn issue obviously is something that shows that in many respects this administration is in disarray and they've got a lot of work to do. The president, I think, makes statements [and] on other occasions contradicts himself. So we've learned to watch what the president does as opposed to what he says," McCain said.
Although the US senator did not mention Trump's name, he lamented a shift away from the "universal values" in the US and Europe, which had forged a NATO alliance seven decades ago. He said that the founders of the alliance would be "alarmed by the growing inability, and even unwillingness, to separate truth from lies," the Guardian reported.
MCain, who is also the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, added that "more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticising it as our moral equivalent".
The European governments have been unsettled by the signals Trump has been sending over a range of international policy issues, from NATO and Russia to Iran, Israel and European integration ever since he formally assumed presidency on January 20. The European countries are particularly concerned about his apparent close ties with Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.
Trump's defence secretary Jim Mattis and his secretary of state Rex Tillerson's debut trip to Europe has, however, worked in some ways to assuage the concerns of the European governments as both the officials took a more traditional US stance at a meeting of G20 countries in Bonn.
US Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to address the Munich conference on Saturday where the leader will convey a similar message of reassurance to the European countries. Pence is expected to say that Europe is an indispensable partner of America.
