the washington post reports that when sondland testifies before the house committees thursday, he plans to say the content of that text message was relayed to him directly by president trump, and he doesn t know if it was true. the post also reports, quote, sondland contends he didn t know about the biden connection until a whistle-blower complaint and transcript surfaced in late september. now, to trust sondland s testimony here, members of congress are going to have to believe that sondland had not seen televised appearances by giuliani over the spring and summer or numerous newspaper and magazine articles. and amid all this, trump is also facing growing chaos in the middle east. just over a week ago, he essentially signed off on turkey s invasion of northern syria, allowing turkish forces to attack kurdish fighters who had been allied with the u.s. in the war on isis. since then the region has been plunged into violence. turkey has expanded its assault. today trump sent vice presi
general. the washington post reports when sondland testifies before the committees he plans to say the content of that text message was relayed to him directly by president trump and he doesn t know if it s true. the post also reports, quote, sondland contends he didn t know about the biden connection until a whistle-blower complaint and transcript surfaced in late september. to trust sondland s testimony, members of congress will have to believe sondeland had not seen televised appearances by giuliani over the spring and summer or numerous newspaper and magazine articles. allowing turkish fighters to attack kurds who had been aligned with the u.s. trump sent vice president pence and treasury secretary mnuchin out to the microphones outside the west wing lobby to announce he s imposing sanctions on turkey for their actions in syria. and try to tamp down the blowback that trump has received from members of his own party.
when sondland testifies before the committees he plans to say the content of that text message was relayed to him directly by president trump and he doesn t know if it s true. the post also reports, quote, sondland contends he didn t know about the biden connection until a whistle-blower complaint and transcript surfaced in late september. to trust sondland s testimony, members of congress will have to believe sondeland had not seen televised appearances by giuliani over the spring and summer or numerous newspaper and magazine articles. allowing turkish fighters to attack kurds who had been aligned with the u.s. trump sent vice president pence and treasury secretary mnuchin
only defeated isis but was maintaining some stability in a very unstable part of the world. but with the u.s. announcing it s withdrawing, you have turkey move in, having russia and the assad regime in syria pushing back. you likely see a full-scale war on the border which is bad for everybody because the u.s. stabilizing force is gone. so senator, that is area where you couldn t agree more with senator graham and there s not a whole lot that you guys agree on but on this you re on the same page. he said that the conditional sanctions that mnuchin keeps talking about, we re ready to go right now, but they haven t moved, he said conditional sanctions embolden president erdogan. is he right? are you supportive of the legislation that they have put forth with very severe sanctions on turkey and erdogan and some of the leadership in turkey?
the turkish economy if erdogan did this kind of thing, and yet he s doing absolutelying nothing. in fact absolutely nothing. in fact, this administration sided with russia and opposed a resolution at the united nations security council, a statement condemning turkey s actions. so congress is going to first call upon the president to do the right thing. but since we can t count on that, we will have this bipartisan legislation that will impose very stiff sanctions on turkey until they stop their aggression and withdraw their forces. chris: now, treasury secretary mnuchin on friday said that president trump had authorized him not that he had imposed, but authorized him at some point to impose tough sanctions on, against turkey. here the secretary of the treasury. these are very powerful sanctions. we hope we don t have to use them, but we can shut down the turkish economy if we need to. chris: so i guess the question