"Strategically brilliant"

It was Nancy who had the meltdown.  Sure.

Donald Trump’s clash with Democratic lawmakers reached new heights when top Democrats walked out of a White House meeting and House speaker Nancy Pelosi pitied the president for having a “meltdown”.

Pelosi and other top Democrats say they walked out of the contentious White House briefing on Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria after it devolved into an insult-fest and it became clear the president had no plan to deal with a potentially revival of Isis in the Middle East.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, told reporters Trump had called Pelosi a “third-rate politician”. He said the meeting “was not a dialogue, this was sort of a diatribe, a nasty diatribe not focused on the facts”.

  Guardian

A third-rate politician. And he used to be so nice to her before she announced impeachment. I hope she called him unfit for office, but I know she didn't.

Pelosi said: “I pray for the president all the time … I think now we have to pray for his health – this was a very serious meltdown on the part of the president.”

She added Democrats “couldn’t continue in the meeting because he was just not relating to the reality of it”.

Did she take notes for the articles of impeachment? And when has he ever related to the reality of anything?

Republicans pushed back, arguing it was Pelosi who’d been the problem. “She storms out of another meeting, trying to make it unproductive,” said the House GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy.

The White House spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, called Pelosi’s action “baffling but not surprising”.

Trump himself pushed back in a series of tweets, calling Pelosi “Nervous Nancy” and the Democrats the “Do Nothing Democrats”.

[...]

The move came on the same day the US House, which is bitterly divided over the impeachment inquiry, nonetheless banded together to overwhelmingly support a resolution condemning the president’s Syria policy by a vote of 354-60.

Sad!

Trump declared on Wednesday that the US had no stake in defending the Kurdish fighters, who died by the thousands as America’s partners against Isis extremists.

Condemnation of Trump’s stance on Turkey, Syria and the Kurds was quick and severe during the day, and Pelosi said Trump appeared visibly “shaken up” after nearly two-thirds of the House GOP caucus voted in support of the resolution.

[...]

The Syria briefing marked the first face-to-face interaction between Trump and Pelosi since the House speaker formally launched an impeachment inquiry against the president last month.

Trump himself has stalked out of his White House meetings in the past, including with congressional leaders in May, when he said he would no longer work with Democrats unless they dropped all Russia investigations, and last January during the partial government shutdown.

[...]

Details of the contentious encounter continued to emerge throughout Wednesday evening. Trump was said to have kicked off the meeting by bragging about his “nasty” letter to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to a Democrat familiar with the meeting who was granted anonymity by the Associated Press to discuss it.

Somebody "leaked" it to Fox News. If he was bragging about it, I'm guessing it was at his bidding.

Pelosi mentioned the House vote and Schumer began to read the president a quote from the former defense secretary James Mattis on the need to keep US troops in Syria to prevent a resurgent of Islamic State fighters.

But Trump cut Schumer off, complaining that Mattis was “the world’s most overrated general. You know why? He wasn’t tough enough.” Trump went on: “I captured Isis.”

HE captured ISIS. Then I guess that means HE let them go.

Pelosi explained to Trump that Russia has always wanted a “foothold in the Middle East”, and now it now had one with the US withdrawal, according to a senior Democratic aide who was also granted anonymity.

“All roads with you lead to Putin,” the speaker said.

Then things escalated.

Trump said to Pelosi: “I hate Isis more than you do.” Pelosi responded, “You don’t know that.”

Children. They both need to go.

Schumer intervened at one point and said: “Is your plan to rely on the Syrians and the Turks?”

Trump replied: “Our plan is to keep the American people safe.”

Pelosi said: “That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.”

Trump turned to Pelosi and complained about Barack Obama’s “red line” over Syria. According to Schumer, he then called her “a third-rate politician”.

At that point, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, interjected: “This is not useful.”

Pelosi and Hoyer stood and left the meeting. As they did, Trump said: “Goodbye, we’ll see you at the polls.”

Did Chuck stay?  UPDATE: Chuck left, too.

Donald Trump has hailed his decision to withdraw US troops in Syria, paving way for a Turkish offensive, as “strategically brilliant”, declaring that the Kurds he had abandoned were “much safer now” and were anyway “not angels”.

  Guardian

Christ.

The president’s remarks contradicted the official assessment of both the state and defence departments that the Turkish offensive was a disaster for regional stability and the fight against Isis.

It also undercut a mission to Ankara by the US vice-president, Mike Pence, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, aimed at persuading Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to halt the offensive or face US sanctions.

Fox Business published a bluntly-worded letter Trump sent to Erdoğan last week in which he called on the Turkish leader “to make a good deal”. Trump wrote that he did not want to be “responsible for destroying the Turkish economy”, if an agreement to limit the offensive was not reached.

“History will look on your favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen,” Trump wrote in the letter which the White House confirmed was real. “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!”

What? No "like me"?

The letter was sent on 9 October – three days after a phone call between the two leaders in which Erdoğan informed Trump of his plans, and understood the US president to give a green light. Trump issued a statement announcing the offensive was about to happen and that US troops would be moved out of the way. He also invited Erdoğan to the White House.

The letter does not seem to have had much impact on the Turkish president, who pushed ahead with the far-ranging offensive on the same day.

'And I have to write a nasty letter, but you understand it's to cover my ass here.'

The Turkish president insisted on Wednesday that he would “never declare a ceasefire” and his spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said Turkey was preparing retaliatory sanctions against the US. Kalin said that Ankara had told the US administration it would not stop the offensive, and would not negotiate with Kurdish forces.

Pompeo said he would be telling the Turkish president: “He needs to stop the incursion into Syria.”

“We need them to stand down, we need a ceasefire, at which point we can begin to put this all back together again,” Pompeo told Fox Business Network.

Ridiculous.

US efforts to restore some leverage in the region in the wake of the hasty retreat of its troops were undermined by the president’s comments on Wednesday, during a visit by the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella.

“I view the situation on the Turkish border with Syria to be, for the United States, strategically brilliant,” Trump said. “Our soldiers are out of there, they’re totally safe.”

The claim was untrue. There are reported to be hundreds of US troops still in the border area, where they have come under fire from Turkish-backed forces. The president seemed unaware or in denial of the precarious and volatile situation in the region for US troops and the Kurdish inhabitants.

He must have read the US public as only caring about our troops. (And he could be right.)

“Our soldiers are not in harm’s way, as they shouldn’t be as two countries fight over land. That has nothing to do with us,” Trump said. “The Kurds are much safer right now, but the Kurds know how to fight. And as I said they’re not angels, they’re not angels.

“We paid a lot of money for them to fight with us and that’s OK,” the president went on. “They did well when they fought with us they didn’t do so well when they didn’t fight with us.”

Could he be any MORE disgusting? Wait for it.

At one point, the US president declared the Kurdish insurgents in Turkey (the PKK), strongly linked to Kurdish forces in Syria, were “more of a terrorist threat than Isis”. His remarks closely mirrored Ankara’s talking points, but were starkly at odds with US intelligence and defence assessments which identify Isis as a direct threat to US security.

[...]

“Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with.

[...]

The president insisted that the US had no business being in the region.

He's right about that, but I'm not sure breaking all the windows and walking away to let somebody else clean up the mess is the way to handle it. Of course, that's how Trump has handled everything in his life.

Two-thirds of House Republicans supported a House resolution condemning his decision to withdraw troops from northeastern Syria.

[...]

The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, normally a staunch Trump ally said on Twitter: “I firmly believe that if President Trump continues to make such statements this will be a disaster worse than President Obama’s decision to leave Iraq.”

[...]

A day after the US withdrew much of its 1,000-strong force in north-eastern Syria, Russian and Syrian soldiers were inside the city of Manbij, with both countries’ flags seen flying from some government buildings and military convoys.

The Kremlin said it plans to host the Turkish leader in the coming days to discuss hostilities between Turkey and Syria. The Russian military is patrolling between the two countries’ forces to prevent an escalation.

Fighting between Kurdish forces and Turkey and its allies continued in the border city of Ras al-Ayn.

Turkey claims it has captured the city, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish fighters had launched “a large counter-attack” on Tuesday and reported “fierce combat” in the west of the town as well as in another city, Tel Abyad.

Thank you, Mr. President!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



Thus my point with the "Schiff" quote:  'And I have to write a nasty letter, but you understand it's to cover my ass here.'