syrian regime and the kurds frchlt the beginning of this conflict there s been real questions as to whether the turks are serious about about being in business with us and whether it s the nuclear weapons, arms sales or nato membership we do have taupe back and have some wholesale conversation about our relationship. one of the weird things that s happening here, we saw that statement put up after the call by erdogan took everyone by surprise. literally, i don t think anyone saw that coming. it basically said look, they have a green light. we re going to move our troops out of position so they can go in. there s this weird overcompensation happening now where the president is like he s going to destroy their economy, hiking steel tariffs, withdrawing the remaining u.s. troops from syria, going to he wants to sanction them. right. lindsey graham is working on sanctions. i don t know what sense to make
fight the turks ourselves or wave them through. this, to me, is so tragic, because all of it could have been avoidable, had trump decided to do the diplomatic work ahead of the american pullout. on the nuclear weapons point, obviously the relationship with turkey is fraught for a million different reasons and has been for a long time. do you give credence to those reports? david sanger piece in the new york times, does that worry you? it does. listen, we do have to step back and assess what kind of security partnership we re willing to have with the turks. this is the latest in what has been a long series of moves by the turks that suggest they don t really want to be in a long-term mutual defense relationship with the united states. beginning of the syria conflict, we were begging the turks to shut down the border because they were actively waving through isis personnel and resources into syria so they could create problems for the syrian regime and the kurds