THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019 |POLITICO| 3Trump tries new defense in
Syria furor: Insult the Kurds
President Donald Trump on
Wednesday minimized Turkey’s
invasion of northeastern Syria
as a land skirmish that does not
warrant American intervention
and repeatedly insulted the
Kurdish fi ghters who battled
alongside U.S. forces to quash the
Islamic State in the region.
During a pair of appearances
alongside the Italian president,
Trump glossed over the
campaign against the Middle
East terror group and instead
mounted a vigorous defense of
his widely condemned decision
to allow Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s forces
to push into Syria — where they
have slaughtered the U.S.-allied
Kurds and wreaked havoc that
has resulted in the escape of
hundreds of ISIS adherents from
a detention camp.
“They’re not angels, if you
take a look,” the president told
reporters in the Oval Offi ce of the
Syrian Kurdish militias.
“You have to go back and take a
look. But they fought with us, and
we paid a lot of money for them to
fi ght with us, and that’s OK,” he
continued. “They did well when
they fought with us. They didn’t
do so well when they didn’t fi ght
with us.”
Trump reprised those insults at
a White House news conference,
again asserting that the Kurds
“are no angels, OK? Who is an
angel? There aren’t too many
around.”
The incendiary remarks
represented perhaps the
president’s most dismissive
attempt to justify his dramatic
shift earlier this month in
Syrian foreign policy, and come
just days aft er the Pentagon’s
announcement that Trump had
ordered the evacuation of the last
U.S. troops still stationed in the
Middle Eastern nation.
“Our soldiers are not in harm’s
way — as they shouldn’t be, as two
countries fi ght over land that has
nothing to do with us,” he said.
Facing a sustained Turkish
onslaught since the American
withdrawal, the beseiged
Kurds have aligned themselves
with President Bashar Assad’s
government in Damascus, which
is backed by Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
Trump on Wednesday
appeared unconcerned by the
prospect of Moscow exerting
new geopolitical infl uence
amid the escalating military
confrontation.
“Syria may have some help
with Russia, and that’s fi ne. It’s
a lot of sand. They’ve got a lot of
sand over there, so there’s a lot of
sand that they can play with,” he
said, later adding: “I wish them
all a lot of luck.”
Trump also claimed that the
regional actors embroiled in
the confl ict share the United
States’ commitment to stamping
out ISIS, and charged that the
Kurds loosed at least some of
the militants now at large in
order to apply pressure to the
administration.
“Russia, Iran, Syria, and to
maybe a slightly lesser extent
Turkey, they all hate ISIS as
much as we do, and it’s their part
of the world. We’re 7,000 miles
away,” he said, adding that it
would be “very easy to recapture
those people that probably the
Kurds let go to make a little bit
stronger political impact.”
The president bowed Monday
to bipartisan pressure from
Congress to punish Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
signing an executive order
imposing “powerful” sanctions
targeting Turkey for its Syrian
incursion and the subsequent
Kurdish slaughter.
Though Democratic lawmakers
remain largely unsatisfi ed by
the White House’s economic
penalties against a NATO ally,
Trump insisted that senior
administration offi cials are
endeavoring to halt Turkey’s
off ensive.
“We’re watching and we’re
negotiating and we’re trying
to get Turkey to do the right
thing because we’d like to stop
wars, regardless [of] whether
Americans are in or whether
they’re not in,” he said. “We
want to see wars stop. That’s
a very important thing on a
humanitarian basis, we want to
see that happen.”
But the president praised his
own controversial directives as
commander in chief, arguing that
“the situation on the Turkish
border with Syria” has proved
“strategically brilliant” for U.S.
interests, while acknowledging
that he knew yanking American
service members from Syria
would all but ensure the current
tumult.
— Quint ForgeyTrump smacks down Graham
after latest Syria broadside
President Donald Trump on
Wednesday lashed out at Sen.
Lindsey Graham, marking the
latest salvo in the pair’s clash overTrump’s sudden withdrawal of
U.S. troops from northern Syria.
“Lindsey Graham would like
to stay in the Middle East for
the next thousand years with
thousands of soldiers fi ghting
other people’s wars. I want to
get out of the Middle East,”
Trump charged during a news
conference at the White House
alongside Italian President Sergio
Mattarella.
Trump and Graham have been
engaged in a war of words for
the past week and a half over
Trump’s abrupt decision and
his subsequent defenses, with
Graham accusing the president
of essentially helping facilitate
the revival of the Islamic State
terrorist group. Trump’s decision
prompted an across-the-board
backlash, paving the way for
Congress to formally rebuke the
president for the move.
The tensions between the
two men seemed to recede
in recent days with Trump’s
announcement that he would
slap Turkey with sanctions over
the off ensive and his decision
to send a delegation headed by
Vice President Mike Pence and
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
to make the case for a cease-fi re
to Turkey’s president in person.
But Trump reignited the feud
Wednesday morning when he
claimed the confl ict “has nothing
to do with us.”
Speaking to reporters in the
Oval Offi ce, Trump also asserted
that Kurdish fi ghters, who allied
with the U.S. and did a great deal
of the fi ghting to defeat ISIS over
the past half decade, were “not
angels.”
That prompted a few barbs
from Graham, which Trump was
then asked about at the later news
conference.
“I hope President Trump is
right in his belief that Turkey’sinvasion of Syria is of no concern
to us, abandoning the Kurds
won’t come back to haunt us,
ISIS won’t reemerge, and Iran
will not fi ll the vacuum created
by this decision,” Graham
said Wednesday. “However, I
fi rmly believe that if President
Trump continues to make such
statements this will be a disaster
worse than President Obama’s
decision to leave Iraq.”
And in a tweet, Graham said
Trump’s apparent indiff erence
toward the Kurds “completely
undercut” Pence and Pompeo
on their impending trip to meet
with Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, hampering their
“ability to end the confl ict.”
Trump swatted back in his
response to Graham, essentially
telling Graham to stay in his
own lane, and suggesting that
he focus on the Senate Judiciary
Committee he chairs, “like the
do-nothing Democrats.”
“I think Lindsey should focus
on Judiciary. He ought to fi nd
out about what happened with
Comey, what happened with
McCabe, Lisa, what happened
with Peter Strzok, what
happened with President Obama,
what happened with Brennan,”
he said, referring to a cast of his
favorite political punching bags
who played a role in the Russia
investigation.
“That’s what Lindsey ought
to focus on,” he continued.
“That’s what the people of South
Carolina want him to focus on.
The people of South Carolina
don’t want us to get into a war
with Turkey, a NATO member, or
with Syria.”
Trump brandished his political
bona fi des as proof, arguing
that he knew South Carolinians
wanted to see troops return
to the U.S. because “I won an
election based on that. Whetherit’s good or bad, that’s the way
it is. If you look at this country,
I’d be willing to bet anything —
political instinct — that’s what
the country wants.”
Moments later, a defi ant
Graham fi red back: “I will not be
quiet, I will do everything I can
to help the president get to a good
spot, but if we do not leave some
residual forces behind to partner
with the Kurds, ISIS will come
back.”
— Caitlin Oprysko and Marianne LeVineRick Perry won’t commit
to answering subpoena
Energy Secretary Rick Perry
refused to say Wednesday
whether he would answer
a House subpoena seeking
information on his role in the
Ukraine controversy that sparked
Democrats’ impeachment probe.
“The House has sent a
subpoena over for the records
that we have, and our general
counsel and the White House
counsel are going through the
process right now,” Perry said
on Fox Business on Wednesday
morning. “I’m going to follow the
lead of my counsel on that.”
Perry later refused to address a
question on impeachment during
a press call this morning focused
on the secretary’s upcoming
trip to Brussels. But the White
House has previously said it
would not cooperate with the
impeachment inquiry focused on
President Donald Trump’s eff ort
to pressure Ukraine to investigate
former Vice President Joe Biden.
House Democrats wish to know
more about Perry’s role in U.S.-
Ukraine diplomacy as one of the
“three amigos,” a group of Trump
allies placed in charge of foreign
relations in the country over
the heads of career diplomats.
Perry became a target for the
probe when a whistleblower’s
report noted that he substituted
for Vice President Mike Pence as
the head of the U.S. delegation
to the inauguration of Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Chairman Lisa
Murkowski (R-Alaska) said
she didn’t discuss Perry’s role
in the unfolding Ukrainian
scandal nor reports of his
forthcoming departure from the
administration when she saw
him in Iceland last week. She
also declined to state whether
he should comply with the
Democratic subpoena as part of
its impeachment inquiry.
“That’s something they’re all
trying to work through,” she told
reporters. “The administration
has made pretty clear they don’t
think anyone should comply,
but that’s what they got to work
through.”
Her Democratic counterpart,
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.),
disagreed and said Perry should
comply with the subpoena and
added evading one is inconsistent
with Perry’s character. The two
men knew each other well while
serving as governors of their
states.
“Absolutely, everybody should
comply with the subpoena,”
he said. “It’s not his character
whatsoever [not to]. I know deep
down he would want to do it.”
— Eric Wolff and Anthony AdragnaALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
Fight over flight?
A model of the next-generation Air Force One is displayed at an Oval Offi ce meeting between President
Donald Trump and Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday. Trump said the U.S. couldn’t lose
in a trade war with the European Union as the U.S. prepares to impose trade sanctions on up to $7.
billion worth of EU goods on Friday. Th e duties come aft er the World Trade Organization ruled European
planemaker Airbus received illegal subsidies; however, the EU has won a similar WTO case accusing the
U.S. of illegally subsidizing Boeing. Mattarella called the tariff s counterproductive.A daily diar y of the Trump presidencyFORTY FIVE