we will lose that when we pull these troops out. but i am sympathetic to the idea that trump pulled the wool off and, hey, assad won, and assad won this wore not because of trump. assad won this war because at no point did the americans have the interest on the ground that the iranians and turks have had. there are 213 international rescue committee staff on the ground in northeast syria, another 200 or 3 hundr00 in ita which is a province of 3.5 million people now. the u.s. presence on the ground was undoubtedly up holing an uneasy balance of power. and it s a five, six-way balance of power, but the battle against isis is not over in northeast syria. we shouldn t believe that. and the danger, obviously, is either that you have more in the northeast or there s a deal where the northeast is given over to the assad forces, but then in idlib, where you have these 3.5 million people and there are isis presence as well
of the moon and weak chinese sales made apple miss its target. what can we expect from the other superpower in 2019? i ll talk to the man trump calls the leading authority on china. he was saying that china has total respect for donald trump and for donald trump s very, very large brain. also, 2019 will surely bring some momentous decisions. how should house democrats approach their investigations of the trump presidency? how should trump deal with china? how should countries deal with the climate crisis? how should anyone approach any decision? well, steven johnson has written the book about just that. but first, here s my take. it is nearly the midpoint of donald trump s four-year mandate, a good time to take
ultras who are saying let s crash out. there s a further middle group who is saying let s have some kind of soft landing with the safe harbor and the norway option. and there is a fourth group, including myself not just as an observer, but as a participant, for saying look, the deal promised for brexit in 2016 is not on our front. and just as when you buy a house you do a survey and you re not bound to buy the house until the results of the survey come through, so when you decide to leave the european union, the people should be given a chance to affirm their support for the deal or not to go ahead, buts it is a game of chicken and if there is a second referendum as you re advocating, would you go to britain and campaign? i would certainly campaign more than last time. i did some campaigning, but not enough. and i think it would be a moment of national mobilization. but here s another point, it would be the moment when the populists would have to be taken on, because remember, th
it is his answer for everything relating to jobs, to crime, to the opioid epidemic. he and his supporters are a potent some biymbol for him dea with this problem. it was about mexico paying for the wall in his campaign, so where is that promise, and is the president behaving as though he thinks people have forgotten about that jargon? he s started a number of different arguments here. he started by saying mexico will pay for the wall, then he said the wall will pay for itself. then he said the savings from this new nafta deal will pay for the wall. he s tried to approach that a number of different ways, but it s very clear mexico is not going to pay for the wall. there is no provision that keeps mexico from funding the wall, and in that case, he could build it. there was a meeting with the vice president yesterday, there might be another one.
imperious and narcissistic that he struggles to retain talented officials. he has no background in policy, nor any inclination to learn anything about it. so, he simply wings it. the result is that he has many balls up in the air and no clear plan as to how to catch them. he took us to the brink of war with north korea, hoping to get pyongyang to cave. when it didn t, he simply declared victory and moved on. he s begun a trade war with china with no clear sense of the deal he actually wants. he insults key allies for no reason and has no strategy. and now he has shut down the government with rhetoric that leaves him little room for a face-saving compromise. so far, the effects have mostly been bewilderment and a sense of unease as people try to understand where all this is leading and whether things will settle down. well, let me tell you, they won t. trump thrives in an atmosphere of chaos where all the attention is focused on him and nothing is