Trump draws House rebuke on Syria
President’s comments that Turkish assault ‘has nothing to do’ with U.S. shock GOP allies
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump seemed to wash his hands of the conflict between Turkey and America’s Kurdish allies in Syria on Wednesday, generating withering criticism from Republican allies, who rebuked him in a House vote. The day ended with a heated confrontation between Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office.
Trump told reporters that the Turkish assault on Kurdish fighters in northern Syria that began after he pulled out U.S. troops “has nothing to do with us.” He declared that the Kurds who battled the Islamic State alongside United States forces for years were “not angels” but instead essentially selfinterested mercenaries who fought because they were paid to.
The president’s comments triggered a strong rebuttal from fellow Republicans who accused him of abandoning friends of the United States and jeopardizing America’s leadership in the region. Trump then engaged in a sharp exchange at the White House with Democratic congressional leaders.
During the meeting, according to Pelosi, Trump berated her as “a third-grade politician” and suggested that she would be happy if communists gained influence in the Middle East. Pelosi told reporters on the White House driveway afterward that the president seemed “very shaken up” and was having “a meltdown.”
Trump also dismissed his own former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, who resigned last year when the president first tried to withdraw troops from Syria. When Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, began to
cite Mattis, a retired Marine general, the president interjected, calling him “the world’s most overrated general,” according to a Democrat briefed on the meeting.
“You know why?” Trump said. “He wasn’t tough enough. I captured ISIS. Mattis said it would take two years. I captured them in one month.”
The confrontation with the Democrats followed a series of public appearances where the president attempted to justify his decision to withdraw a small number of U.S. troops from the border who had been serving as a kind of trip wire deterring Turkey from attacking Kurdish forces in northern Syria. The decision to pull out the troops was seen as an implicit green light to Turkey, which then launched a powerful offensive against the Kurds.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office alongside the visiting president of Italy, Trump said that the U.S. soldiers he had ordered to pull back were no longer in harm’s way and that “they shouldn’t be as two countries fight over land.”
“That has nothing to do with us,” Trump said, all but dismissing the Kurdish fighters. “The Kurds know how to fight, and, as I said, they’re not angels, they’re not angels,” he said.
But the president denied that he gave a green light to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey during a phone call last week, citing a letter that he wrote a few days afterward.
The president’s comments in the Oval Office and again during a later news conference in the East Room came as Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Robert C. O’Brien, the president’s new national security adviser, were preparing to fly to Turkey in a bid to persuade Erdogan to pull back his offensive.
Trump insisted his handling of the matter had been “strategically brilliant” and minimized concerns for the Kurds, implying that they allied with the United States only out of their own self-interest. “We paid a lot of money for them to fight with us,” he said. Echoing Erdogan’s talking points, Trump compared one faction of the Kurds to the Islamic State and he asserted that Kurds intentionally freed some Islamic State prisoners to create a backlash for him. “Probably the Kurds let go to make a little bit stronger political impact,” he said.
He dismissed concerns that his decision to pull back had opened the way for Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State to move into the abandoned territory and reassert their influence in the area.
“I wish them all a lot of luck,” Trump said of the Russians and Syrians. Warning of a repeat of the disastrous decadelong Soviet war in Afghanistan, he added, “If Russia wants to get involved in Syria, that’s really up to them.”
Critics in both parties condemned the president’s approach. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, opened his weekly news conference by expressing his “gratitude to the Kurds,” adding, “I’m sorry that we are where we are.”
The House passed a bipartisan resolution rebuking Trump for withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria.
The measure, passed by a 354-60 vote Wednesday, says the withdrawal benefits U.S. adversaries including Syria, Iran and Russia. It calls on 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.
Trump got into an extended back and forth with Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., who has been one of the president’s closest allies but emerged as one of the sharpest opponent of his Syria decision
Trump, meanwhile, said that the South Carolina senator should be focusing on investigating the president’s Democratic opponents, including former President Barack Obama.