Over the weekend, President Donald Trump said he’d support a Turkish military excursion into northern Syria. The move frightened military leaders and lawmakers who warned it would harm America’s Kurdish allies in the region.
Reporter Eliot Higgins spoke with a National Security Council official about Trump’s decision, which was made after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The unnamed official said that Trump had gotten “rolled” by his Turkish counterpart.
“President Trump was definitely out-negotiated and only endorsed the troop withdraw to make it look like we are getting something—but we are not getting something,” the National Security Council source said. “The U.S. national security has entered a state of increased danger for decades to come because the president has no spine and that’s the bottom line.”
