WASHINGTON — A growing roster of Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill believe President Trump’s pugnacious rhetoric and unpredictable behavior threaten to diminish the United States’ standing around the world, do real damage to fragile diplomatic relationships and even weaken global stability.

Lawmakers are speaking in increasingly urgent tones about Trump’s unusual foreign policy statements and his tendency to pick fights with domestic and international figures. They say it has taken a toll on the way key allies, foes and other foreign observers view the United States. Even members of Trump’s own party are having difficulties vouching for him.

“A country’s more than one person,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., when asked whether he is concerned that the president’s words have harmed the U.S. image. The senator, who dined with Trump on Wednesday but has also criticized his posture toward Russia, added: “There’s more than one voice in America.”

In a striking speech to international defense officials gathered Friday in Germany, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., suggested that the survival of the western world is at risk from some of the ideas Trump has embraced.

“The next panel asks us to consider whether the West will survive. In recent years, this question would invite accusations of hyperbole and alarmism. Not this year,” McCain said, according to prepared remarks delivered Friday at the Munich Security Conference. “If ever there were a time to treat this question with a deadly seriousness, it is now.”

McCain did not mention Trump by name. But it was clear that he was lamenting the policies and practices of the Trump administration – and their threat to global stability. He imagined how disturbed the security conference’s founders would be. The organization was formed 50 years ago, at the height of the Cold War, to bring world powers together to discuss and further global stability.

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“They would be alarmed by the hardening resentment we see toward immigrants, and refugees, and minority groups, especially Muslims,” said McCain. “They would be alarmed by the growing inability, and even unwillingness, to separate truth from lies. They would be alarmed that more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent.”

McCain, who said there is concern that “America is laying down the mantle of global leadership,” mentioned several Trump administration officials attending the conference – Vice President Mike Pence, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis – as examples of U.S. officials committed to maintaining America’s global role. He did not name Trump, who did not attend.

Democrats are less subtle. Among their top concerns: Trump’s charge that NATO is “obsolete,” which they say has struck a nerve among U.S. partners in the West.

“I think our allies are legitimately terrified that our president is not devoted to NATO, that he is supportive of European disintegration, that the approach that he wants to take with Russia will come at their expense,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Lawmakers in both parties were still reacting Saturday to Trump’s news conference on Thursday, when he lashed out against the media, the intelligence community and his critics – and defended advisers against claims of improper contacts with Russia.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., responded to a question about the news conference Friday by simply letting out a long sigh.


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