after the president announced the complete withdrawal of troops in syria. the president said he knocked isis out but he wants to keep u.s. troops in iraq to strike targets in syria just in case. what do you make of this? he is announcing policy while on the ground with troops in iraq. well, he is. it is a very interesting wrinkle. the president perhaps hedging his military bets, saying some of the troops in iraq could be used to conduct missions across the border into syria if isis rears its head again. did anybody think isis was really defeated? uh, not really. so how would this even work? this is going to be very tough. isis right now, the targets are very difficult. there are just a few. they are not very visible. this is not back in 2014 when there were convoys of isis fighters rolling through cities and towns in syria and iraq. they very much have gone to ground. so if you want the intelligence to be able to conduct either air strike it is or ground missions across the border in
turmoil back home and with his military decisions under fire. the president and the first lady have wrapped up a holiday surprise visit to u.s. troops in iraq. the commander in chief defended his widely-criticized plan to withdraw forces from neighboring syria, claiming isis has been knocked out, quote, silly. the president says he is in no hurry to find a permanent replacement for defense secretary james mattis who quit in protest. mr. trump suggests he is not in a rush to end the partial government shutdown here in the u.s. as well. this hour i will talk with a key democrat on the house armed services committee, congressman john garamini. our correspondents and analysts are standing by at this hour. first to our white house correspondent, abby phillip, there was growing pressure on the president to finally visit troops in a combat zone and today he did it. today was the day. reporter: today was the day, jim. president trump two years into his presidency finally leaving the united s
obama as being the founder of isis during the campaign? that s right. the suggestion was by pulling out of iraq he allowed isis to flourish. there s a concern if there s a precipitous withdrawal from syria the same thing could happen or even worse, and isis, you know, 2.0. if you look across the border in iraq, the government is still in shambles. it was you know, there were elections in may. they still don t have a government seated. there s no budget. reconstruction is very slow and there s not a lot of services or electricity, and this is exactly the kind of vacuum that allowed isis to gain so much strength in the first place. so a lot of concern about that. and then to jim s point about the kurds, he s also leaving turkey very vulnerable bought now, you know, the u.s. had kind of checked the kurds in a way from going across the border into turkey. but now that the u.s. is not going to be there anymore, it does leave turkey quite vulnerable for the kurds. some say they will make
some extent in afghanistan? jim, the administration already had a plan for countering isis in a meaningful way. it was staying engaged with the global coalition to defeat isis and working with our partners around the world to do things to stabilize areas once terrorists were removed from the battle field. this same thing is true on aefgt afghanistan. we have troops on the ground in afghanistan not just to remove the taliban from specific targets but to make sure that they don t come back. so i don t see the administration, trumping trump, if you will, and coming up with a new strategy on top of the ones that they just rolled out a few months ago. the president does not excel at self-reflection, we know that. i think it is very unlikely that he s now going to admit that maybe he got ahead of his skis and announced withdrawals that are directly counter to his own administration s policies. sean, how much do you think the president took away from this trip today? because i mean i woul
insecurity, you know, triggered by the abrupt decision to pull out of syria and then compounded by mattis s decision to resign in response to that. all of that is swirling around him, and the likely hoihood is soon as democrats take over the house next week you will have a new arena of instability with the administration response to what are going to be a large series of issues to be investigated, plus mueller one step behind that. so i think that most observers on all fronts really expect more rather than less, kind of waves of chaos lapping against this white house in 2019. sam vinaigrette, i mean the president was very critical of barack obama during the campaign, called him the founder of isis, claimed he didn t have a plan for dealing with isis and just pulled troops out of iraq. do you see the president do you see the administration putting forward a plan to stop isis from reconstituting, growing stronger, developing somewhere else with this pullout plan in syria and with wha