Republican Senator Mitt Romney was assigned on Thursday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, allowing him to be part of several looming foreign policy battles between Congress and the White House.
Romney reportedly wanted to be on the committee, where two Republican members retired at the end of the last Congress, opening up space on the panel.
He was also named to the Help, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committees, The Hill reports. The committee assignments will need to be ratified by the full Senate next week.
Romney, in a Washington Post op-ed critical of Trump this week, stressed the importance of maintaining international alliances.
“America is strongest when our arms are linked with other nations. We want a unified and strong Europe, not a disintegrating union. We want stable relationships with the nations of Asia that strengthen our mutual security and prosperity,” Romney wrote.
Romney, in his Washington Post op-ed, argued that “the Trump presidency made a deep descent in December.”
“The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a ‘sucker’ in world affairs all defined his presidency down,” Romney wrote.
But the Foreign Relations spot will give him the chance to weigh in on Heather Nauert’s U.N. ambassador nomination as well as lingering foreign policy fights.
Romney told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday that the United States was in Syria “to help our allies there” and “to provide some stability to that region.”
“So, pulling out on a precipitous basis, without interacting with them and coordinating this with them and getting the input, for instance, from Secretary Mattis is something which I think is very troubling to me and to a number of others,” Romney added.
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