this is not only t only tweet making headlines. in fact, josh, i want to go back to something trump tweeted earlier about his conversation with president erdogan of turkey. how does this fit into the mattis narrative? he s talking about eradicating whatever s left of isis in syria saying he s a man who can do it plus turkey is right next door. trump had been getting criticism for how can you say we re pulling out of syria when all of our national security officials tell us there were several thousand isis fighters that remain on the ground in syria and so the president now has an answer to that. that answer is don t worry, turkey will take care of it. as we reported over the weekend, a senior white house official telling nbc news that on this fated phone call between trump and erdogan the turkish leader said mr. president if you pull outover syria i give you my word as a friend we will deal with the rest of isis.
so the president s decision to effectively fire mattis and pull troops from syria, this has caused his conservative allies to question his thinking. as evidence of, that look at this exchange on fox news as they were talking to mercedes schlapp, a senior communications official here. this is something where the president listened to many people in the process and made this decision to move forward on syria. can you name an adviser the president has that recommend he pull out 2000 troops? i m not going to get into the internal discussions of how the decision was made. so that as you can see is a hot topic so the deputy secretary of defense is stepping in. patrick shanahan is a former boeing executive who joined the administration in 2017 and since he s been part of the pentagon, he s taken the lead in helping create the space force. donald trump wants that to be the next and newest military
decision to pull out of syria so the next secretary of defense will have to answer questions about how do you work with a president where your views and his views diverge from conser conservatives in congress. melanie, what do you think when it comes to this confirmation process? i think jamil is exactly right. it will be difficult because republicans and democrats alike will be looking for someone who is willing to challenge the preside president. so they ll face whoever this nominee is, a lot of questions about how to handle certain situations, including the decision to pull out of syria and afghanistan and that will be a difficult position for someone just nominated by the president, wants to look like they re standing up for and being on his side but at the same time willing to challenge him. that s a difficult thing. and there s the question of who would be willing to accept the nomination which is a whole different question. and doubling down on something you said about the
those who study this are concerned about the fact that we ll outsource fight ieg sis to turkey, a country that has other interests in syria that don t necessarily align with ours but the president sees that as a way to say we ll get the job done and the u.s. doesn t have to be responsible. and it will be interesting to see how the president reacts from heat he s taking from top leaders within his own party. thank you all so much for joining us this morning. the government shutdown now in its third day and while federal employees work without pay, congress seems to be taking the christmas holiday off. but when they come back, are things likely to be different? as negotiations all over the border wall, many government agencies might ring in the new year in the dark. i knew about the tremors.