the president sometimes, i don t want to say freelance, but does diplomacy without the full complement of everyone weighing in. maybe they will release the transcript of that call at some point in the coming days. let s go back to istanbul quickly. richard, a question for you. given what we heard there, the big question now is how does this tip the balance in terms of what is happening inside syria. you have the russian, the iranians and the turks are trying to get closer to the russians, could that also be a factor in whether or not turkey goes forward with this operation inside syria? reporter: so quite revealing what hans was saying how first the president was, wanting to make up to erdogan, for having snubbed him, and then he apparently gave the green light to attack, that s what erdogan certainly thought, he announced a military operation was under way, and now, u.s. officials saying no, no, it was just a tactical move, and then ultimately in the end president trump, while h
green light has been extended. has the green light now been taken away? yesterday, it was very clear, there was this conversation over the weekend, between president trump and president erdogan, the turkish president and in that conversation, president trump strongly suggested that the turks could go ahead, launch their long-awaited offensive into the kurdish region of northern syria, and then the white house followed that up with a statement, affirming that fact, that the u.s. would not oppose an operation by turkey in northern syria. then the kurds started screaming out, what is going on, we re being betrayed, we re going to get massacred and very real concerns that that could happen. there has been huge opposition in washington, including from some of president trump s normal supporters, and he issued that very strange self agran dizing tweet about his great and unmatched wisdom, how we attack
authoritarian leader and not our kurdish allies? i m not siding with anybody. we ve been in syria for many years. syria was supposed to be a short-term hit. just a very short-term hit. and we were supposed to be in and out. i don t want anything bad to happen to our people and i told that to president erdogan. i said don t hurt any of our people, get any of our people get hurt, big trouble. those remarks saw the president s tweet threatening to quote totally destroy and obliterate turkey s economy if turkey does anything that i, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be offlimits. so in a rare show of bipartisanship, top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are coming together to condemn president trump s decision to withdraw u.s. forces from the northern border of syria. a number of republicans lawmakers including many of trump s top allies are voicing their opposition, majority leader mitch mcconnell put out a statement saying this is a precipitous withdrawal of u.s. for
turkey if he went too far aernl dialing it back and giving some sort of warning to turkey and feem frankly don t know is this offensive going to happen? in a smaller way? people are trying to figure out what it was the president said to erdogan, what message erdogan received, and then what this bizarre warning to turkey means amid all of this confusion. so you asked what s the latest, people are scratching their heads trying to figure out what trump, what his policy is, regarding the kurds. richard, stay with us for a moment. i want to bring in nbc news correspondent hans nichols from washington, d.c. covering the white house and the pentagon as well. hans, good to have you with us. as you saw richard kind of lay out the confusion that has bee fallen washington as well as the region, let s talk a little bit about what the president intended to do with this because there are questions as to whether or not he was actually signaling to the turkish president that he can have a go ahead,
in the white house, wrote at the time, thank you, president erdogan for joining us to celebrate the twin towers. and we have more from bloomberg, anna edgerton. what does president trump s rollout of this major troop withdrawal reveal about his foreign policy approach and the kind of divisions it has created in the republican party? in some ways it is very on brand. it started with a tweet. and let s kind of walk back by senior officials speaking mostly on background and got a very strong response from republicans from the hill and it was notable how strong lindsey graham s pushback was. he had a very vigorous disagreement with the president on this and notably on fox and friends which he probably expected the president to be watching so it will be interesting to see how republicans respond over the next few days as this policy is played out a little bit more. and we better understand the repercussions of this policy. we have already seen especially amidst the impeachment talk