Trump is blasted for Syria pullout
President lashes back at his critics; Pelosi cites Oval Office ‘meltdown’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump seemed to wash his hands of the conflict between Turkey and America’s Kurdish allies in Syria on Wednesday.
He generated 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 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 the Kurds who battled 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, who walked out of a meeting, complaining he’d been more offensive to them than any president in modern times.
During the meeting, according to Pelosi, Trump berated her as “a thirdrate politician” and suggesting she would be happy if communists gained influence in the Middle East.
Pelosi told reporters in 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,” a Democrat briefed on the meeting said.
“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 the U.S. soldiers he’d ordered to pull back no longer were 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 he wrote a few days afterward.
“History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way,” Trump said in the letter, which was dated Oct. 9 and obtained by Fox News on Wednesday and confirmed by a White House official. “It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen. Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool! I will call you later.”
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 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.
Republicans and Democrats alike have denounced the president for abandoning the Kurds, who now are fighting Turkish forces in a chaotic battlefield that also has put at risk U.S. troops pulling back from the Syrian border with Turkey.
Trump insisted his handling of the matter had been “strategically brilliant” and minimized concerns for the Kurds, implying they allied with the United States only out of their own selfinterest.
“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 ISIS, and he asserted Kurds intentionally freed some ISIS 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 ISIS 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 35460 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.
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 opponents of his Syria decision.
After Trump said the TurkishKurdish conflict was of no interest to the U.S., Graham took to Twitter to castigate the president.
“This is the most screwedup 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.”
Trump pushed back on Graham, saying the South Carolina senator should be focusing on investigating the president’s Democratic opponents, including former President Barack Obama.
“The people of South Carolina don’t want us to get into a war with Turkey, a NATO member, or with Syria,” Trump said. “Let them fight their own wars.”
As he prepared to depart for Turkey, Pompeo said the main goal of meeting with Erdogan was to secure a ceasefire between Turkish and Kurdish forces.
“We need them to stand down, we need a ceasefire, at which point we can begin to put this all back together again,” Pompeo said on Fox Business Network.
However, he also said the Trump administration did not want to isolate Turkey — a fine line the United States must walk as it issues economic penalties against Erdogan’s government.