Trump slams attack in Egypt, urges travel ban
Also tells Turkey that U.S. will stop arming Kurds
JUPITER, Fla. — President Donald Trump on Friday denounced the deadly mosque attack in Egypt and reached out to Egypt’s president, asserting the world must crush terrorists by military means — and insisting the U.S. needs a southern border wall and the travel ban tied up in courts.
“Need the WALL, need the BAN!” Trump tweeted before his call to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah elSissi. “God bless the people of Egypt.”
He added: “The world cannot tolerate terrorism.”
That attack’s aftermath played out as Trump mixed work and play in Florida, golfing — quickly, he claimed — with pros Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson, speaking with foreign leaders and tweeting briskly.
One of the leaders Trump spoke with was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Trump told Erdogan that the United States will cut off its supply of arms to Kurdish fighters in Syria, in a move sure to please Turkey but further alienate Syrian Kurds who bore much of the fight against the Islamic State group.
Trump said he’d “given clear instructions” that the Kurds will receive no more weapons — “and that this nonsense should have ended a long time ago,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
The White House confirmed the move in a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed Erdogan of “pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.”
The White House called the move “consistent with our previous policy” and noted the recent fall of Raqqa, in Syria, once the Islamic State group’s selfdeclared capital but recently liberated by a largely Kurdish force.
“We are progressing into a stabilization phase to ensure that ISIS cannot return,” the White House said, using an acronym for the extremist group.
The move could help ease strained tensions between the U.S. and Turkey, two NATO allies that have been sharply at odds about how best to wage the fight against ISIS.
Turkey considers the Kurdish Syrian fighters, known by the initials YPG, to be terrorists because of their affiliation to outlawed Kurdish rebels who have waged a three decade-long insurgency in Turkey. Yet the U.S. chose to partner with the YPG in Syria anyway, arguing that the battle-hardened Kurds were the most effective fighting force available.
Also Friday, Trump, in an evening tweet, said he turned down an interview and photo shoot for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” issue. Trump said the magazine informed him he was “probably” going to be granted the title for the second year in a row. He tweeted: “I said probably is no good and took a pass.”
Time tweeted Friday that Trump was “incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.”
Trump also complained again Friday about football players who kneel during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. “Can you believe that the disrespect for our Country, our Flag, our Anthem continues without penalty to the players,” Trump said, accusing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell of having “lost control” of what he called a “hemorrhaging league” where “Players are the boss!”
Trump’s tweet was in response to one from his social media chief, Dan Scavino. Scavino had shared a Breitbart News story about New York Giants player Olivier Vernon taking the knee during the anthem on Thanksgiving ahead of a game against the Redskins.
Trump earlier spent more than four hours at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla., before returning to his Mar-a-Lago club “for talks on bringing even more jobs and companies back to the USA!”