before the attack. meanwhile the white house said it is not reversing the president s decision to with draw all u.s. troops from syria. clarissa ward is following the story from syria. we understand you were there a couple days before this attack. what is the situation there now? isis still capable of carrying out deadly violence. reporter: well, jim and poppy, it s important to remind our viewers of the fact that mambij is nowhere near the front lines in the battle against isis. it is a seven-hour drive away. this is territory that was liberated from isis back in september of 2016. daily life has resumed there. when we went we found streets full of people bustling. we actually drove past the restaurant, a place where we were shooting footage just a couple hundred yards away. based on the small amount of
claim in recent weeks. we have won against isis. we have beaten them and we have beaten them badly. the consequences of the withdraw now becoming more clear. it does not end groups historically. it means they have to shift strategies to a gorilla style campaign. that is what isis has now done. and tonight two u.s. officials tell cnn there are no plans to change president trump s withdraw from syria. all right. thanks so much. cnn chief international is now ton ground in northern syria. you have been to syria more than a dozen times. you were down to street from where this happened. are you surprised by this attack? well, i would say i m surprised in the sense that it was liberated back in september of 2016. it has been quite some time since they took control of that
under attack and the russians were carrying out an information warfare attack to support donald trump s candidacy. all throughout august and september of 2016 it became apparent he was working either as a witting asset or an unwitting asset who suddenly realized that they were working in his favor. now, after two years of that, two books by myself and a lot of reporting by msnbc and other channels, it is very clear that the very tip of the iceberg that we see indicates that donald trump has been working as a wholly owned subsidiary of the kremlin and it is only a matter of time. we ve been using the word counterintelligence for two years now. the new york times only found some evidence that robert mueller has managed to keep suppressed because when this breaks, if it is true, this is not ome the end of donald trump s presidency, we re going to have to start wondering whether the word treason is going to come back into fashion.
why is it not resonating? i don t know, john. the president will have a chance tonight to make his case to the american people. you step back and see the president asked for $5 billion for the wall funding and the democrats said they would not support a concrete wall and he said he was comfortable with steel barriers and they passed a budget with $20 billion additional spending. 5% is one-tenth of the overall budget. the president has a chance to make his case to the american people. what would be different tonight. i put the numbers on the screen. support for the wall has not budged, september of 2016 to now. 57. oppose it. it was 58% in 2016. it has not budged. the president talks about this all the time, hasn t convinced them yet. why would tonight be different? the president can make this a
detailing the ways in which russia allegedly cultivated donald trump for years and then set out to help him win the presidential election, and the ways in which members of the trump campaign allegedly cooperated in those russian intelligence efforts. the dossier named names, including the president s long-time perm lawyer and fixer michael cohen, whose name appears multiple times in the dossier. as someone who was a key go-between between the russian effort and the trump campaign. bif this point in january 2017, michael cohen had become a fixture on the cable news circuit as a trash-talking outspoken defender of donald trump, but the steele dossier painted him in a much more nefarious light. op the second to last page of the dossier, on page 34, christopher steele wrote a couple of months before the election in august or september of 2016, as the kremlin was growing more concerned about the negative public fallout from the hacking of the dnc and the dumping of information through wikil