House rebukes Syria move; Democrats walk out on Trump

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House on Wednesday passed a bipartisan resolution rebuking President Donald Trump for withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria.

Afterward, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats walked out of an afternoon meeting at the White House, accusing the president of having a “meltdown.”

The House measure, passed by a 35460 vote, says the withdrawal benefits U.S. adversaries including Syria, Iran and Russia. It calls on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to “immediately cease unilateral military action” in northern Syria.

“This resolution reaffirms our commitment to supporting our Kurdish partners and preventing an ISIS resurgence that would threaten our homeland,” Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the lead House GOP sponsor of the measure and the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

After the House vote, the congressional leaders of both parties went to the White house for a briefing, where Trump and Pelosi traded jabs. The Democrats said they walked out when the meeting devolved into an insult-fest.

Republicans said it was Pelosi who’d been the problem. White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said the speaker “had no intention of listening or contributing to an important meeting on national security issues.”

Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria has drawn harsh criticism from both sides of the aisle, including one of his closest allies, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“This is the most screwed-up decision I’ve seen since I have been in Congress,” Graham said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting.

Trump used a news conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella to say: “Lindsey Graham would like to stay in the Middle East for the next thousand years.”

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) called Trump’s decision to withdraw troops “callous and impulsive.”