of thousands of american soldiers fighting a war between turkey and syria. syria is not our friend. assad is not our friend. reporter: shortly before vice president mike pence and secretary of state mike pompeo leave for turkey to broker a cease-fire, trump seemed to parrot turkey president erdogan s talking points against the u.s. one-time allies, the kurds. i m not going to get involved in a war between turkey and syria, especially when, if you look at the kurds, and again i say this with great respect, they re no angels. if you look at pkk take a look at pkk. isis respects pkk. you know why? because they re as tough or tougher than isis. reporter: as the house democrats impeachment inquiry turns up the pressure on the white house, trump is testing his republican firewall in the senate with his moves on syria. he is not listening to his commanders. he is not listening to his advisers. he is not he s making the biggest mistake of his
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isis, that got us into back into the war in iraq during the obama administration was the slaughter of christian minorities in iraq by isis. what will protect those communities that we have been spending $350 million to protect and touting it as a big success? i don t, i think the president is really sending mixed signals here on this situation. he is now doubling down on his decision to go ahead and we don t know if it was a green lighting, or, he does seem to be supporting the sanctions again. turkey, while at the same time, kind of coming down and saying that the kurds are no angels. he is trying to have it both ways, and sanctioning the cat once it is out of the bag is kind of a strange strategy. neil: not to risk alienating the president of italy, but right in harm s way, you think about another drain,
defense secretary mark esper travels to nato headquarters next week. u.s. officials are trying to decide whether to suspend or cancel turkey s nato membership. sandra: ari fleischer former white house press secretary and fox news contributor. welcome. we re just getting a read-out from the meeting that is happening in the white house right now. the president is obviously talking about syria right now. he just said the kurds and turks may find and mention they are no angels, by the way. this coming from the president inside the white house just a few moments ago. your reaction to that. he is right. in this region of the world there are no angels. the american people don t know who is on the side of angels. but i do think the president made a blunder in that phone call with president erdogan. i think it would have been better for the united states to stay there and say in the phone call you cannot invade, do not
syria. he also said that if russia wants to get involved in syria it s up to them. and as peter just pointed out there are no angels. that s how he talked about the kurds. what are folks there on the ground saying to you? i know you have a lot of contacts there in the part of the world. i have been talking to folks up to this morning, people who said we re hoping that the russians get here versus the turkish backed opposition because they were fearful for their lives. and i had one young man who said to me, we were really hoping that the americans would stay. because what we saw was we had a fragile stability. where you never saw the americans. i mean, the americans really were this oz like presence that hung over the area and kept other actors out. but in the meantime they allowed the fragile stability to really take hold. we have gone from fragile stability to land grab between russia and turkey and turkish backed forces and syrian regime within a matter of days. and i think what i