to defend himself even if it strains or runs contrary to the truth. edgar also noted members of both parties are now being pushed by their bases. you got pretty smart people on both sides forced into taking the extreme position, whether hellbent on impeachment or impeachment never. for sure. we live in this polarized era where extremism is rewarded over and over again. we ve seen the obliteration of the middle in american politics. and we ve seen the obliteration of truth. and that s fundamental in a democracy. you can t have a functional democracy absent truth because if you can t establish truth, there can t be accountability. look, russia was a democracy. they re not now. turkey. they ve been jailing i believe top five around the world in jailing journalists. suddenly, they re not a democracy. i just want to say it s not conjecture. and it s why going back now, it was such an ominous development. day one, when he comes out. sends the press secretary out to say this crowd size
undemocratic, jailing political opponents, jailing journalists. i believe turkey has more journalists in jail than any country around the world. and europeans are unhappy, upset about this, questioning turkey s reliability. and then there s a question of turkey buying an air defense system from russia at the same time that it s part of an alliance that at least in part is about defending europe against russia. so these are questions that make europeans uneasy. donald trump as that warm relationship with president erdogan of turkey. he has been his protector and supporter in the past. that s one of the things to watch this week. does that blow up because of european anger at turkey? david ignatius, always good to have you. thank you, sir. great, thank you. for months, democrats have lagged behind the so-called trump money machine. but looks like they could finally be on the verge of catching up. why the two billionaires in the
middle eastern nations are not modern nation states like in europe. eric: quickly, finally, erdogan has been jailing journalists, lawyers, he s been called a dick dadictator, not the type of rege that would be similar to american values. quickly and finally, what do we do about him, if anything? he s all those things. eric: how do you continue this cooperation. if you continue to cooperate with kim jong un as obama did, as president trump did, and a policy of strategic patience, i say it s better to wait and he see if we get a yo a new leader. turkey has other actors inside of its own regime to value the nato alliance too. erdogan may not last forever. we need to outlast him. if we try to kick if we are the ones to kick turkey out of may he toe, if we do that, it could begin the unraveling of the whole nato alliance.
conversely i would challenge mr. erdogan who i have met in my previous role as chairman of the intelligence community to step up. human rights abuses, jailing journalists. completely. they ve got their own set of issues. i understand his perspective and i think he s right. i i m always a little bit cautious as i think a little of that was self-serving for mr. erdogan. but the message is right. we all need to on anti-semitism, which i think mr. erdogan could pay attention to that as well growing across not only turkey, but europe as well. there needs to be strong condemnation as well as any rise of any ism around the world, white nationalism is certainly one particular issue, but there are others. we ought to stand together on all of this, and i think our leaders need to take pretty strong positions and make it known this is unacceptable behavior, and we won t you know, we re not going to put up
released to the u.s.? well, i think what has happened here is a fascinating case of a single person story symbolizing something much deeper. there was always this question about saudi arabia and about the new crown prince, which was on the one hand he seemed to be reforming. he seemed to be reining in the religious police. he was allowing women to drive. he was having, you know, more entertainment, all these things that people have long asked for in saudi arabia. people like jamal khashoggi. but people like khashoggi were saying, look, it s all very well to do this reform. but at the same time, you shouldn t be jailing democracy activists. you shouldn t be jailing journalists. you shouldn t be jailing bloggers. and that was the criticism that khashoggi was putting forward even though he had long been an advocate of all the reforms that the crown prince was doing. he was saying, you can t do them