demotion and then what s gone on with esper and spencer. it s chaos. he s president chaos. now it s flowing over into the pentagon. this is not new. go back to the trans ban, the kurds, mattis, this. trump is at odds with his own military. we ll find out what happened with esper and who spoke to who. you re in uniform right now, you see chaos at the top, leadership that s not on the same page and senior leader saying that the president gave him an unlawful order and he s not going to follow it, and that guy is out. it comes on the back of the resignation of mattis. what good order and discipline means, what it means to be lawful in the military. commander in chief is at odds with the navy s.e.a.l.s, we ve got a problem. another shade of exactly what paul is talking about, david, when it comes to what has happened here, this comes down to a question of chain of command. the president is the commander in chief. who is stepping out of line
russian takeover in northern syria. vladimir putin s forces moving to fill the void left behind by u.s. troops leaving. we get more on that from nbc s richard engel. reporter: russian television did some gloating showing them take up position on the u.s. base in syria. last month, president trump ordered u.s. troops to withdraw from northern syria and instead guard syria s oil fields creating an opportunity for russia and a catastrophe for u.s. allies, the kurds, who without american protection have come under fierce attack by their old enemy, turkey. general joseph votel recently retired as the head of centcom. it makes it difficult for those who have served here to watch this occur and it doesn t seem very honorable to me to step away in your partners and then to allow some of this to happen
richard, you have followed up with kurdish officials. what are they telling you? we have been talking to them tonight and they say they re still under attack by turkey and they are appalled that while this offensive continues, president trump met with turkey s president erdogan and gave him a big reception. thank you very much. you can see much more in the special, on assignment, american betrayal, sunday 10:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. just ahead here for us, what britain s prince andrew is saying in a revealing new interview about his relationship with convicted sex offender jeffrey epstein. also a big suspension after that stunning fight at last night s nfl game
would seem two slightly irregular channels. mike pompeo was on it but that doesn t seem to be the variable these days. trump gave a green light to turk aeye on a military offensive in syria that killed, as jonathan lemire said, hundreds of kurds. you got an oval office meeting and he had an opportunity to share a video on his ipad that sounds like the kind of propaganda that normal national security adviser keeps far, far, far away from any president or any west wing. and it s not clear what america got. well, america got nothing. in fact we got deeply embarrassed on the world stage. the video depicts the leader of the syrian democratic forces that lost 11,000 people in the fight to dislodge isis with the support of our special forces. these are the people that trump abandoned. and some of these kurds were killed. so lives were lost. so we are looking at the reality show component here in washington. these are life and death decisions that trump has made. stepping back to what do we
house strategy? i mean, bringing the autocrat that donald trump had another sketchy phone call with and let him run a military op to distract from the sketchy phone call with ukraine? yeah. it s a puzzling bit of counterprogramming if you will. certainly the president has shown great affinity for strongmen, for authoritarian leaders like erdogan. he bragged yesterday that they had been friends for a long time. he said that they were close. he praised him in his leadership in turkey. he made those just jaw-dropping statements that erdogan had a good relationship with the kurds. we can fact-check that. they do not have a good relationship. and, in fact, erdogan, you know, after the president gave the order to withdraw most u.s. troops from syria, turkey moved in with real violence and hundreds of kurds are believed to have been killed. this is the president though, you know, looking prioritizing tactics over strategy. short-term wins, short-term